Marvel 2000: Young Avengers
by Hunter Lambright
Summary: fadsfadsf
1. Prelude 1

_**Location Undisclosed**_

The room was dark and silent, save for the breathing of its three occupants. All sat up straight in their swivel chairs, and none of them looked at each other as they waited. Positioned at different spots around a square conference table, the three stared either at the door or blank projector screen on the opposite wall.

The door cracked open slowly, spilling white light from the hallway into the room. In stepped a third man, staring now at the expressionless two men and the woman.

The man pulled back his sunglasses. "Oh, here already?" he smiled. The other three were not amused by his flippant nature. "Good, then let's get started."

Walking over to the screen, the man pulled a small remote from his pocket. Pressing a button, the projector screen came to life, featuring a scene from Normandy Beach. "Let's take a trip back in time to World War II. The Axis powers were scaring the living hell out of the U. S. of A., and no one knew what to do to keep the folks at home's morale up. White House PR were trying just about everything they could to get people to keep buying bonds and supporting their boys overseas from posters to live demonstrations. Still, nothing quite seemed to be enough, you know?"

*Click!* The screen changed to a close-up of the image, zeroing in on a single soldier from the previous image. He wore a full bodysuit, complete with wings sprouting on either side of the "A" on the middle of his forehead. Flanking him, just barely distinguishable from the side, was a teenage boy in a domino mask.

"So they invented the Super-Soldier program. Why not put some of that bond money into making better soldiers? Then, when we succeed, we dress 'em up in red, white, and blue, and send them out into the field so that everyone can cheer for 'em at home," the man continued. "You're a—forgive me for not using the euphemism—_spin doctor_, right Mr. Higgins? Tell me, is anything I'm saying false?"

Higgins, a burly man with wire-rimmed glasses and a handlebar mustache, coughed into his hand before answering. "So far everything you've said is true," he confirmed, coughing again afterwards. "However, we _do_ prefer to be called public relations officials, if it's all the same to you, Lieutenant."

The man gave a smile laced with malice. "It's _not_ all the same, Higgins. Please refrain from calling me by title or name again. This room is secure, but not foolproof." The Lieutenant turned to the other two in the room and flashed a reassuring smile. "But let's put all that aside for now…"

*Click!* The screen flashed again, this time to a slide featuring a cascade of stars-and-stripes-themed heroes and heroines in flight around the Stature of Liberty. "Unfortunately for the United States, putting its heroes in a faraway setting didn't quite cut it for the majority of the populace. They needed heroes they could practically _touch_, not just ones they could see on the screen in the theaters." The Lieutenant paused.

*Click!* A new screen popped up, featuring pictures of the Destroyer, Rockman, Patriot, and other heroes of the forties. "Lucky for the White House, the problem began to take care of itself, as an odd series of fluke accidents led to the creation of at least a couple dozen self-made heroes. Things couldn't have worked out better."

"Except once the war was over…" said the second man, a fossil with thin gray hair and shaking hands.

"Exactly, Cartwright," said the Lieutenant. "What do you do with a good thirty heroes that don't have anything to do once the bomb was dropped? Back then, the government was aware that having heroes could very well create a super-villain problem, as it seems to have done today."

The woman, an expert on the history of super-heroics, spoke up for the first time. Adjusting her horn-rimmed glasses, she spoke in a nasal tone. "You send them to Hiroshima for clean-up efforts, and conveniently never hear from them again." Her voice was almost accusing in that regard.

"That's because they never got to Hiroshima," the Lieutenant said, once again with his sideways smile. "You see, Ms. Windsor, we put several of these so-called heroes on ice, in psychic conditioning, and we prepared to use them again in the future. That's what we do here in my division—we put the leftovers away until it's fit to bring them out for the next big war."

*Click!* A slide popped up with the Phantom Reporter shooting out Korean antagonists at a rural airstrip.

*Click!* Mister E tackled a Vietnamese soldier to the ground in the forestry of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

*Click!* The original Black Widow attacked a huddle of Iraqi insurgents during Operation: Desert Storm.

"Wait—why doesn't anyone remember this happening? When anyone who remembers these heroes thinks back, they only think of them as World War II heroes—not as recurring wartime soldiers," Ms. Windsor interrupted, wiping her glasses as if to make sure some smudge wasn't altering her vision.

The Lieutenant narrowed his eyebrows at her. "We're a very careful group here at the Division. As soon as the war was over—as soon as the 'morale boost' was unneeded—we wiped out all trace of their involvement. History books prefer to look back at soldiers and ranks, rather than heroes who, through some act of God, could take care of more than the rest."

"Okay, we understand _that_," Higgins broke in. "What are _we_ here for?"

"There's a war going on," said the Lieutenant. "The War on Terror has all but lost the support of the American people. You're here because we're going to activate one of the sleepers."

"That's the problem," Higgins coughed. "In the modern age, most Americans are beyond the flashiness of super-heroes. They see them on a daily basis. What does your sleeper agent have that lifts the morale of the masses?"

The Lieutenant chuckled. "Oh, no. You're not getting it at all. He's not supposed to excite the world—he just needs to _distract_ it…"

**Young Avengers Prelude #1: **_**Sleeper Soldier**_**, featuring the Secret Stamp**

**By Hunter Lambright**

_**Remington Preparatory School**_

_**St. Louis, Missouri**_

The sun's rays trickled pleasantly across the tree-covered grounds of the Remington Preparatory School just outside St. Louis. Summer was just beginning to trickle into fall, and the trees began to reflect that change in shades of orange, yellow, and red. Boys and girls from age twelve to eighteen dashed about the grounds or sat in groups of two and three, enjoying their lunch hour before heading back to class.

On one of the cement walks that led to the school stood a lone boy, staring at the rest. Dressed in the khaki slacks and black sweater over white dress shirt that composed the school uniform, the boy yearned to be socially accepted among his classmates. There were multiple reasons that he couldn't, ranging from the fact that he came from another time to the sad truth that the Handler had forbidden it. Life had never been the same for Roddy Colt since he received his "gifts."

"Hey, kid! Kid! Watch out!" shouted another voice from across the lawn. Roddy turned in time to see a football spiraling toward his head. Reacting with inhuman reflexes, his forearm shot out, deflecting the pigskin missile.

The boy who had shouted raised a curious eyebrow. "God_damn_, you're fast!" he said. "You should play with us sometime."

Roddy shook his head. "No hand-eye coordination," he muttered. _Don't draw attention to yourself!_ he scolded himself inside.

The boy raised his eyebrow again before rejoining the game without question. Roddy gave a sigh of relief. No one needed to know about him. It would screw things up, and he didn't want to "go away" again. The fact of the matter was that Hell was indeed a place on earth, but rather than flames, it held a cryogenic freeze.

Roddy shook his head and continued walking toward his chemistry class in the science wing, reflecting along the way. He hadn't had a normal life since he was fourteen. Technically, he was now in his seventies. As a hero who emerged toward the end of the war, he'd been active for no more than two years before the "Hiroshima Cleanup."

Like most other "hometown heroes" of the age, he'd gotten his powers from a freak accident. Instead of receiving a shipment of polio vaccination, his doctor received vials of super-soldier prototype. Out of twenty-three mistreated patients, only Roddy survived. No one had ever told his story because it was likely even the government didn't remember it anymore. It was one of those things that ended up in the bottom of a shredder or a stack of unused comic book scripts so that there was no record to check in the future.

The fact of the matter was, so many things had changed. Life was so much more relaxed—no one seemed to have to work for _anything_. It was like you could get anything at a snap. Not only that, but Roddy was discomforted that there were so many _girls_ in school with him. The first time he'd seen one of them in the clothes they wore when school wasn't in session, his face had gone beet-red and he'd had to excuse himself from the room rather quickly.

As he walked in the room, Roddy's chemistry teacher, an old fellow by the name of Mr. Cartwright, clapped him on the back. "Grab a lab apron and a pair of goggles, son. I'm going to be demonstrating the volatile nature of the alkali metals today, and those things are our best precaution in case things get, well, _heated_, shall we say?"

Roddy did his best to ignore the old man, who was arguably one of the creepiest teachers in the school. He was the kind who spent his time dropping papers on the ground in front of the table of a girl wearing a skirt. The biggest difference between him and the rest of the teachers like that was that he hadn't been written up yet.

After he tied the back of the apron, Roddy placed the goggles on top of his head. His schoolbooks rested on top of the lab table next to his stool. Slowly, other students began to trickle into the room. Several minutes later, the room was full and the bell sounded. Class was in session.

"Good afternoon, class," said Cartwright, pulling a pen out of his white lab coat. Everything about him screamed that "mad scientist" look. "I trust you all had an enjoyable lunch?"

There were a few unenthused mumblings from the rest of the class. Cartwright narrowed his eyes in disappointment, but continued onward nonetheless. "Well, if your lunch was merely ho-hum, I have a demonstration for you today that's sure to knock some flare back into your day!" He walked over to the fume hood, where a vise gripped a solid block of some white substance. "This right here is pure sodium. As one of the alkali metals, it is one of the most reactive—and you'll see just what I mean by that momentarily!"

He walked back to the storage room and emerged with a large beaker teeming with boiling water. Steam poured heavily from its surface, condensing in Cartwright's eyebrows. "I'm going to place this under the sodium. As the water vapor begins to condense on the sodium, you'll notice that the sodium will begin to react very strongly to the contact. But I'd rather not spoil the surprise—see it for yourself!"

He placed the beaker under the sodium. Almost right away, a flare sparked up on the side of the sodium, followed instantaneously by several more that were more powerful than the first, rocking the vise. The class sat and watched it like a fireworks show.

Roddy watched as, with each spark, the vise jolted left and right. He saw the screw turn slightly. "Um…Mr. Cartwright?" he asked worriedly.

"Yes, m'boy?" Cartwright asked, turning his attention away from the experiment onto Roddy.

Roddy's expression turned from concern to horror as he saw the sodium block begin to slip from the vise. "Sir! It's going to—"

The sound of shattering glass interrupted Roddy's warning as the sodium dropped directly into the water. Flames shot outward as the sodium reacted strongly to the full-on contact with the liquid, sending the students in the front seats scrambling.

"Everyone out! Pull the alarm and get everyone clear!" Cartwright shouted, instantly taking charge of the situation.

Something was wrong with the situation, but Roddy had trouble thinking straight while the sodium continued reacting with each fresh layer that was exposed after each subsequent reaction. He waited until most of the class had left before it finally clicked—he heard a hissing noise. Roddy had only heard that noise once before, during an experiment a week ago where the group had used Bunsen burners to heat a nitrate solution.

"Sir! Something's—" Roddy started. His words caught in his throat as, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flaming piece of sodium catch the ceiling tile. This was getting out of hand, and fast—and he knew exactly what needed to be done. He was just sorry that it had come this far.

Cartwright reappeared from the storage room with a fire extinguisher—which, in reality, only gave the highly-reactive metal something _else_ to react with. If anything, the suddenly blast caused the reaction to spread itself across the room. Soon the old man began coughing, falling to his knees.

Now the fire alarm was ringing, the flames had spread from the fume hood, and all of the current efforts to quell them had failed. As the fire inched across the ceiling, it was soon obvious that, without some kind of help—and fast—the entire wing would be up in flames.

Roddy emerged from the storage room in time to see Cartwright fall to the ground. His hair was now spiked up hastily while the rest of his body was clothed in yellow spandex. A red, white, and blue badge was splayed across his chest, with a single stripe extending from this badge down each limb.

As he'd done several times decades ago, Roddy slung Cartwright over his shoulders, carrying him out of the classroom. Smoke had long since filled the room, so Roddy struggled to stay as low as possible while sacrificing the time it took to get out of the building.

He made it to the first door in the hallway in less than a minute and kicked it open, running as best as he could under the weight of the older man. He lowed Cartwright to the ground in front of the gathered populace of the school. "Get this man help!" Roddy ordered.

A teacher in the front of the crowd—a large man with glasses and a bad toupee—stepped forward. "Um…who are you?"

Roddy sighed inwardly. Still, he had a façade to put on. "I'm the Secret Stamp, protector of hometown America!" he exclaimed.

The teacher groaned. "I guess we should be thankful that it took this long before these guys came to Missouri…" he said to himself.

Another teacher spoke up. "We're missing two students from Cartwright's ros—"

Without waiting for another word, Roddy turned tail and sprinted back into the building. He burst into the chemistry room and shouted, "Anyone in here?" He was rewarded with a lungful of smoke. Creeping low to the ground, he coughed before trying again. "Is anyone here?"

"Here…" said a weak voice from the front of the room at the opposite side of the initial explosion. "We're over here…!"

Roddy scrambled across the heated floor to the corner where he saw a girl he thought he remembered as Lisa, and—to his dismay—his roommate, Evan. Lisa knelt over Evan's prone form. "I couldn't drag him," she explained. "He passed out when it exploded!"

Despite having an athlete's physique, Evan had a weak heart and few friends. There was no telling what kind of damage such a shock to his system combined with the smoke in his lungs could do. "I'll take care of him," Roddy said, making his voice deeper so that Lisa wouldn't recognize it. "You just take care of you!"

While Lisa crawled toward the door, Roddy slung Evan easily over his shoulder—a feat made easy by the super-soldier serum that ran through his veins. Holding his breath, Roddy made a run for it—before he realized that he still heard the hissing noise.

"Oh, Jes—!" he began as a stream of fire burst from the hose on the nearest lab table. His suspicion earlier had been right—someone must have bumped the gas handle in the confusion on the way out.

At the speed of thought, he turned his body so that the blast caught him in the chest rather than catching Evan in the back. He dove forward, out of the way of the makeshift flamethrower, groaning from the excruciating pain from his chest. Still, he had priorities—_he _would heal. If he spent much longer in this room, Evan might not.

With one last mad burst of speed, Roddy tore through the door of the chemistry room and dashed down the hall through the double doors with Evan on his back. He then lay his unconscious roommate on the grass, panting.

Behind him, from the sudden influx of fresh air let in by the now-open doors, the back-draft roared outward, fueled further as the fire from the gas lines at the lab tables finally traveled backwards along the lines into the tank held in the basement.

The explosion launched fiery debris and rubble that caused the crowd to cringe. Teachers watched onward solemnly as the science wing went down in flames. Still, there was a light in the solemnity of the crowd as Lisa, still coughing up a lung from smoke inhalation, told the story of the masked hero who came back to save her and Evan. Cartwright would later identify him as a throwback from the forties—the Secret Stamp.

Roddy was gone from the scene thirty seconds after the explosion. The fire department arrived seven minutes later—but all they could do was cool off the ashes. Everyone knew that someone had saved no fewer than three lives that day—and Roddy was destined to pretend to guess at who was under the costume while his mask gained the respect and popularity that _he_ so desperately needed…

_**Boys' Dormitories**_

That night, Roddy reclined on his bed in his dorm room, trying not to move lest he disturb the already-healing burns on his chest. He rolled his neck to rid himself of the crick that had formed as he struggled to read the book that, due to his injury, he could only hold at his abdomen.

Roddy sat up with a start as the doorknob began turning to his room. He relaxed slightly as Evan sauntered in. "What's the diagnosis?" Roddy asked with a crooked, lopsided grin that masked his concern.

"The usual," Evan responded, his mood instantly going sour. "Lisa said I went pale the second the experiment exploded, and really, that's the last thing I remember. I wish I remembered the medical term for 'chronic fainting,' don't you? Sucks, too. I mean, I'm built to be a swimmer like my brother, but…I kinda lack in the cardio zone, if you know what I mean."

"You can't help it," Roddy tried, knowing it was no use. Evan's heart condition had always been a source of bitterness, so Roddy pressed no further.

As Evan continued toward his side of the room, his left leg gave at the knee, causing him to stumble. Roddy jumped to his friend's aid, ignoring the pain in his chest. "Are you sure you're fine?"

Evan paused, regaining his bearings. "Yeah." He paused. "Still a little woozy, I guess. Wh—is that _blood_?"

Roddy glanced down at his chest, shocked to see the reddish-brown blood billowing across the front of his shirt. "Oh, man!" He started to pull away and head into the closet-sized bathroom attached to their room.

"Wait—Roddy, what's going on? What did you do?" Evan asked, his brow furrowing in worry. "I'm gonna go get the nurse."

"No!" Roddy cried emphatically. "You can't do that!"

"Why?" Evan asked, as an epiphany washed his features from concern to horror. "You're a cutter?"

"No!" Roddy repeated. "Not that! It's just—you can't! I just can't tell you why, though!" Evan now watched nervously from the doorway as Roddy stripped off his shirt and unraveled his blood-soaked bandages.

"Well, what do you want me to do, then? I can't just _stand _here!" Evan said in exasperation. Roddy fiddled with clean gauze as Evan's eyes focused exposed wound. "I-is that a burn? Did you get burned in the fire?"

"Yeah…no…uh, sorta," Roddy amended. He couldn't think straight and take care of himself at the same time. Cartwright was going to kill him for this.

"Then…why didn't you go to the nurse?" Evan asked in bewilderment. He turned to the door. "Look at you, you're bleeding all over! I'm getting her down here now!"

Roddy, angry at the situation and frustrated with all the questions, blurted, "Because I wasn't supposed to _be_ in the fire! Because no one _knows_ I was in the fire! Because everyone thinks someone _else_ was in the fire saving your sorry butt!"

"But…you _didn't_ save me. Lisa said it was a super-hero—the Secret Stamp," Evan protested, his hand on the doorknob.

Roddy turned quickly to Evan. "You're my only friend here, man, but you can't add two and two to save your life. I _am_ the Secret Stamp!"

Evan's jaw dropped before moving to make words that wouldn't come to him. Roddy suddenly slumped against the wall, having used all the strength he'd built up since the fire. His back squeaked against the wall as he crumpled to the ground.

"Roddy?" Evan asked hesitantly.

He nodded his head weakly. "I…please. Help me."

Finally stopping with the questions, Evan grabbed the gauze Roddy dropped and pressed it to the half-scabbed wound. He then wrapped it in place and, as soon as Roddy felt he could move, lifted him to his bed.

"You really need to get that checked out," Evan said, in an almost scolding tone.

Roddy rolled his eyes weakly. "Yeah, right, _Mother_."

"Just thank God tomorrow's Saturday," Evan replied. "I don't know how you're going to make it through next week, though." He shut off the light before undressing and crawling into his own bed.

"I heal fast. It's part of the whole super-power package," Roddy explained.

Evan chuckled. "I don't know whether to believe you and become your sidekick or doubt you and tell the headmaster."

"Seriously?"

"Nah. There was always something weird about you. This just explains it," Evan said.

"Well, as long as you're still my friend. I have trouble making 'em, if you couldn't tell. The Stamp, though…he's always stolen my show. It sucks, being at war with your alter-ego, y'know?" Roddy reflected.

"I've never had any experience with that, personally," Evan said. "It's kinda cool, actually, being the only one who knows. Besides, you _did_ kinda save my life back there."

"Well, we're even now," Roddy said. "I don't like leaving debts unpaid."

He saw Evan roll over in his bed. "If you say so. I'm struggling to stay awake right now, though. I think the meds they gave me are…" he yawned, "…kicking in…" He got in one last jibe before drifting off. "But seriously…the hell were…you thinking? Naming yourself…the Secret Stamp?"

Roddy laughed a little before turning his head and closing his eyes. He felt a hundred-eighty degree turn from his earlier train of thought. Somehow, despite the fact that everything went to Hell, he'd come out better because of it.

_Yeah,_ he thought, as his mind rolled into dreamland. _This is what this "super-hero" thing is all about…_

_**Two Days Later**_

Roddy walked down the hall of the old English wing, where the school had temporarily relocated the science classes while the science wing was cleared out and rebuilt. It was after class hours, and Roddy had been forced to come up with an excuse as to why he was going into the school so late.

"Remedial chem. lessons," he explained to Evan as he headed out the door, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Now, Roddy opened the door to Cartwright's temporary room, poking his head in the door. Cartwright sat at his heavy wooden desk, looking up from the papers he was grading. "Roddy, m'boy, come on in. Have a seat!"

Roddy took a seat in one of the desk chairs in the front row of the class. "So, how've things been going since the big event? Catastrophic, wasn't it?" Cartwright asked.

Shaking his head, Roddy gave a little chuckle. "Let's cut straight to it, Cartwright. You may be a government-trained handler, but you sure as hell don't know how to make things subtle. That 'mishap' was a set-up. I'm willing to bet that wasn't even sodium—or water."

Cartwright took off his reading glasses and fiddled with them in hands that shook slightly from age. "Perceptive, aren't you?"

There was a momentary silence before Roddy spoke again. "What? That's all you have to say about it?"

"We defrosted you, boy, so you do what we tell you to—and even things that we don't. That's the deal. If you don't like it like that, we could always put you back in the freezer—or, if you seem to care so little for the well-being of people around here, we could arrange an _accident_ where that friend of yours—Evan, right? He might some sudden shock to his system, and I doubt his poor heart would be able to take it…"

"No! Stay away from him!" Roddy shouted. "Your problem's with me, not my friend."

"There shouldn't _be_ a problem at all," Cartwright spat.

Roddy sighed. "Sorry. I'll do whatever I need to do. Just stay away from him. He's not part of this."

Cartwright nodded, as if appreciating the speed with which they'd reached the foregone conclusion. "Good. Now, we have other business than that of the past to deal with. You are aware, I take it, that your United States history class is taking a field trip to the Gateway Arch for a deeper look into Jefferson's life and influence blah-blah blah?" Roddy nodded. "Well, you won't be there for that," Cartwright continued.

"What do you mean?"

"Wear your uniform under your school clothes," Cartwright said with finality.

"Wait—why?" Roddy protested.

"You'll need it," Cartwright said simply. He gestured to the door. "Good night, Roddy."

Roddy said nothing as he stepped outside, fuming. It was bad enough that the government he started his career for had put him in a cryogenic freeze, but now they wanted him to run in blind? He swore to God, if he got out of this whole mess, he was getting out of this whole business—as long as it meant he wasn't going back in the Freezer.

_*******_

The day Roddy had dreaded all week arrived with rain clouds and thunderclaps. Students taking U.S. History at the Remington school lined up to get on the buses that would take them to the Gateway Arch, huddling under raincoats and umbrellas.

All the way there, Ms. Prentiss, the history teacher, rambled on and on about the Louisiana Purchase and the Declaration of Independence. Evan's eyes glazed over less than two minutes into the lecture, but Roddy stayed alert during the entire ride. Cartwright had never specified when on the trip another so-called accident would occur.

The buses pulled up to the historical park with screeching brakes and a slight shudder. It figured that the problem would occur here, with the historical significance of the Arch, the fact that it stands out as a national landmark, and the complications that might arise from a situation within such an oddly shaped monument.

Stepping out of the bus, Roddy shielded his eyes against the rain to get a better look at the monument overhead. It was hard to believe that the landmark could support its own weight, let alone that of the spectators that traveled to its peak. He shuddered, imagining himself swaying back and forth in the top level. He quickly pushed the thought from his mind.

_No sense in getting queasy now,_ he thought to himself. The funniest part of the entire deal was that the campaign to get the Arch built didn't even start until 1947, two years after Roddy conveniently disappeared along with the rest of the Hiroshima Cleanup Crew. This marvel in engineering hadn't seen the light of day before Roddy's eyelids had been frozen shut.

"Now, you'll have to pass through security checkpoints," Ms. Prentiss warned, "and anyone who fails to get through will be getting at least two weeks of detention from me, and god knows what else from the school itself. This is your final warning. Your pocketknives, drugs…I don't care that you have them. I don't need to know. I don't _want_ to know. Just don't do anything that would embarrass me or the school, got it?"

Several students nodded, so Ms. Prentiss turned and took the lead as the student body marched toward the Jefferson Expansion Park entrance. They went through the customary metal detectors and the girls were asked to run their purses through the type of scanner typically seen in an airport.

One girl, who looked particularly naïve thanks to her double ponytails and buck teeth, raised her hand. "Excuse me, Mr. Officer? Are we in any danger here from, like, terrorists or something?"

The security officer, a black man in his early forties, just smiled. "Believe me, young lady. We check everyone who comes and goes through here. You are all completely safe." Inwardly, Roddy squirmed at his confidence.

Ms. Prentiss waited for the group to get through the security checkpoint before dividing the class into three different groups, each led by a different school sponsor. Roddy and Evan were both put in the group led by Prentiss herself, which was a guarantee that the tour would be boring and filled with impertinent questions about Jefferson, Sacagawea, and the Louisiana Purchase.

Their guide was a short, pudgy woman with a wrinkled nose. "Thanks for visiting us here at the Jefferson Expansion Memorial Park. I'll be taking you through the entire park today," she began in a drawling tone that made Evan swoon sleepily on his feet. "The first stop for your group is the Arch itself, you lucky kids!" Her false enthusiasm was almost sickening.

The group was too large for a single elevator trip—although the guide took the time to correct the notion. "You're not going up in an elevator," she said. "This is a tram system, base largely on Ferris wheel cages so that you stay upright as you go up the Arch." Evan yawned dangerously, and Roddy had to prod him twice on the way up to the top of the Arch to keep him awake.

At the upper platform, the guide spoke while the group looked around, taking in the views around them. While everyone else was astonished with the sight of the city sprawling out hundreds of feet beneath them, Roddy paid careful attention to the room.

They were the only visitors currently visiting the Arch thanks to the prearranged field trip, but they were not the only ones in the Arch itself. A Hispanic cleaning woman pushed a broom across the floor, and a white-bearded electrician worked on some wiring near the elevator—or rather, tram.

The electrician stepped back from his electrical work before turning to Roddy. His nameplate read U. Sam Abrams. Initials U.S.A.—Uncle Sam Abrams.

Roddy struggled to maintain his cool, but very obviously shuddered at the realization. The electrician noted this before giving Roddy a malicious smile and hurrying down the stairs. He held in his hand a small detonator, complete with its own little red button.

Evan registered what was going on just before Roddy sprinted to the fire alarm and pulled it, lighting up the signs over the stair exits. "Everyone, get the hell out of here!" he shouted, emphasizing Roddy's point. Then Evan, too, scrambled for the staircase. While the class group marched down the stairs on the side they came up, Roddy shed his school uniform for something more yellow before diving down the opposite staircase after the electrician.

Klaxons now blared throughout the Arch and the Memorial Park complex. Evan pushed past several students to where Ms. Prentiss struggled down the stairs in her high heels. "Ms. Prentiss! Someone's gonna blow up the Arch!"

"Evan! Someone just pulled the fire alarm—don't jump to conclusions!" Prentiss sputtered. "Threats like that are felony charges!"

"But—" Evan started. Roddy had told him what Cartwright had implied that night.

"No buts, Evan," Prentiss snapped, just as one of her heels did. Even though he hadn't convinced her, he felt some small triumph at that, despite the fact that it was lost in the chaos around him.

On the other side of the Arch, Roddy took the stairs downward three at a time. The fake electrician didn't have much of a lead on him. He sprinted downward, careful that his feet caught the stairs. He couldn't stop this from happening if he was flat on his face.

Roddy turned and was shocked to see the man standing right there, holding up the detonator. "You know, they told me to try to get away from you if I could, but you know what? I wanted to see the look on your face when I pushed the button."

"If you push it, then I won't have any mercy," Roddy said before kicking himself for using another 1940s line.

U. Sam Abrams laughed at that, shaking his head. "The thing about standoffs is this: they only work if both sides are afraid to pull the damn trigger." Then, he pushed the button on the detonator.

For a second, nothing happened. Roddy looked to see if there was confusion or worry on Abrams' face, but there was only pure, violent glee.

_**KABOOM!**_

Roddy was knocked to his knees by the blast as it shook the whole Arch. Before he got up, Abrams was running down the stairs again. Roddy took a few seconds to regain feeling in his right ankle before scrambling after him.

He tackled Abrams from behind, wrapping his arms and legs around the larger man's torso. Abrams wrestled back and forth before snapping his head back onto Roddy's forehead. Roddy loosened his grip as his head flashed white with pain. The electrician shook off the teenage hero and began running again.

There was a much louder cacophony now. The fire alarms still raged, but now there were police and fire sirens in the distance, brought on by screams and tears. They reached the bottom only for Roddy to look up and see just how bad the damage was.

The two legs of the Arch remained intact for the most part, but the adjoining centerpiece that held the platform was now ripped apart. Little held the two legs of the Arch together. Roddy prepared to dive for the electrician when he heard a newfound roar of screams and saw spectators pointing upward. There hung the Hispanic cleaning wmoan for her life, grasping two twisted metal beams with her arms.

The earpiece of Roddy's costume crackled to life for the first time. Roddy heard Cartwright's voice on the other end and seethed with hatred. "Your choice: save the woman, or catch the culprit…"

Roddy couldn't contain his explosive anger. "You bastard! You're just coveringyou're your man!"

"Maybe," Cartwright said, "Or maybe I'm testing your usefulness in the field rather than the Freezer. You get to decide whether I'm telling the truth or not…"

But Roddy had already made his choice. His quadriceps burned as his legs dug into the staircase, ripping upwards at the same speed he'd dashed down.

"You know, people are going to ask how they managed to get that much explosive material past security and onto the Arch," Cartwright reflected in the earpiece. "They'll probably never figure out that it was us."

"Shut up!" Roddy hissed, breathing heavily. His race was against the clock; he could deal with Cartwright later.

"Of course, we'll pass this off as something that it's not. Terrorist attack, I call it. That way, we can keep that buffoon in charge by saying that, had he had his chance to act the way he wanted, this terrorist attack couldn't have happened in a million years," Cartwright said idly. "And, of course, we could use this to cover up what's going on in the Middle East as we speak…"

Roddy wasn't listening anymore. He reached the smoldering platform and heard the cries of the woman. "_Dios mio_!" she screeched. "_Ayudame_!"

"I'm coming!" Roddy shouted, dodging holes in the crumbling metal of the platform.

"You know, the Arch has been structurally damaged beyond repair," Cartwright informed him. "The trajectory is leaning towards the statehouse."

Roddy leaned across the twisted metal, reaching for the woman's arm. "Give me you hand…uh, _tu mano!_" Spanish had been his worst subject at Remington's, and now it was coming back to haunt him.

The woman pleaded with him with her hazel eyes, reaching for him with her right arm. As she did this, her left slipped. Roddy snatched at her right hand, grunting in triumph as he caught her at the wrist.

Triumph turned to horror when her weight shifted as her shoulder dislocated. One second, her hand was there. The next, the crowd was silent, shying away from the landing zone. Very few were optimistic enough to inch forward to help. "NO!" Roddy screamed. He felt like his screamed lasted for full minutes.

Cartwright's laugh was maniacal. "Did you seriously think we expected you to _succeed_?"

Roddy was beside himself with his failure that the words didn't hit home. "You're the Secret Scapegoat, and a damn good one at that!" Cartwright slammed.

Without the support of a full structure, the Arch swayed dangerously in the wind. Roddy didn't seem to realize this. He knelt there at the edge, somehow in shock. _The good guys always win_, he kept telling himself. That's how it had _always_ been.

Roddy's world had been turned upside down, but the Arch began to literally tilt, taking Roddy from vertical to eight-five degrees, seventy-five, sixty-five, forty-five, thirty, fifteen…one-hundred and eighty with the ground.

As the Arch crashed to the ground, Roddy offered one last prayer up to a God he wasn't sure existed anymore. _Please, please…don't let them take me back to the Freezer when this all is over…and don't let my friends forget me this time around. See you soon…_

_Amen._

_**Epilogue**_

"This is Thom Arthur with BCN Broadcasting, and our headline story tonight comes to you from overseas," said the overly groomed newsman on the television. "Reports have trickled in of an American raid on an Iraqi village, leaving behind only the bodies of forty-two women and children in the proc—"

Thom Arthur grabbed his earpiece with concern. "Please, bear with me for a moment," he said, though it was obvious that whatever he heard disturbed him. "There's been breaking news on a terrorist attack in Missouri. I repeat, there has been a terrorist attack on the Jefferson Expansion Memorial Park. Terrorists reportedly planted bombs on the main platform of the Arch that, after detonation, weakened the structure to the point that the Gateway Arch has fallen. Casualties are estimated in the hundreds. We'll now switch over to Terri Jacoby who is on-scene. Terri?"

***

Evan walked back into his room on a mission of both bargaining and denial. He denied the idea that Roddy was dead and gone, and bargained that, if someone else picked up the mantle of the Stamp, maybe Roddy would somehow be brought back from the dead.

He dug through Roddy's clothes in the closet before coming across the bright, familiar spandex suit. Evan pulled the mask over his face and stared at himself in the mirror.

"Come on back, man," he whispered to Roddy's ghost. "Come on, man…"

***

The Lieutenant and his council met in the back room of god-knows-where once again. This time, however, the projector was off, and the light in the room was on.

Holding out his hands, the Lieutenant wore on his face what must have, for him, qualified as a real smile. "Congratulations, lady and gentlemen. Project: Secret Stamp was an unqualified success."

He then pulled from his bag on the floor a stack of manila folders. He scattered them across the conference table.

"So, who do we defrost next?"

_**END**_

**Author's Note**

First off and foremost, I have never been inside the Gateway Arch in my life. Neither the Park's website nor Wikipedia could give me the information I needed. And no, sorry, Giant-Man did not pick it up for a game of horseshoes with the Washington Monument. But that would have been fun, admittedly.

Second, a huge thanks to Dave Golightly for dusting off Agent Axis and inspiring me to take a look at a Golden Age hero who could use a new coat of paint.

I'd also like to say that, for the record, Roddy Colt and the Secret Stamp identity are real, and not original concepts of my own. I know, none of you have ever heard of this kid, but I think I did him justice.

So I know you're asking yourself why I wrote this issue if I was just going to kill off the main character at the end. The point I had in mind was opening the can of worms involving the Golden Age and introducing a couple of toys that I hope to see in the future, whether in a title of my own (should I ever get the balls to write up a pitch) or in someone else's, should they find these ideas worthy enough for use. The Lieutenant, Cartwright, U.S. Abrams, and the new Secret Stamp were all fun to write, and you _know_ someone's gotta mention the fact that the Gateway Arch is no more.

Oh, one more very, very important thing. This is my first work for Marvel 2000, so let me know what you think. If you liked it, maybe I'll swing back around for more.

Thanks for reading this far,

Hunter Lambright


	2. Prelude 2

**Young Avengers Prelude #2: "Earn Your (Water) Wings" featuring Rapier**

**By Hunter Lambright**

_Note: This story takes place prior about four months prior to the beginning of Marvel 2000's Young Avengers series. _

_**Venice, Florida**_

Michael Corson had two great loves: fencing and the ocean.

Well, to say it like that was misleading. He did love to fence, but he loved the ocean the most when it was under a microscope or labeled in a test tube. The science behind the rolling waves and the teeming waters had always been more interesting to Michael than spending time on wave-boards and beach volleyball. Still, he always found himself at the beach at least once a week, if not always for the right reason.

Michael and his father lived together in Venice. His mother had walked out of the house when he was three years old, presumably for another man. Ever since, his dad had been out of luck, moving from one job to the next. They were scheduled to move to Fort Myers in two weeks, and that was why Michael was at the beach. His dad had told him that he ought to go hang out with his friends before they left and, not anxious to reveal that he really didn't have any friends, Michael went to the beach alone.

It wasn't that he was overweight or geeky that made him an outcast. Michael was lithe and wiry from the hours he spent fencing with his father each week, and more than couple of the girls in his school had crushes on him. He had slightly curly, dark hair and dark eyes that always seemed to be somewhere else. No, it wasn't the looks that set him apart at all. It was the fact that no one really saw eye to eye with him, and as long as that was different, Michael didn't mind being alone.

Michael felt the sand between his toes as he stepped over the walkway onto the beach. The summer heat hadn't done much to chase away the beachgoers, although Michael recognized few of them. That wasn't surprising either. He expected that, on most days, ninety percent of the people at the beach were vacationers. He wouldn't have been surprised to hear British accents or people speaking German, either. Only the ignorant believed that American beaches only attracted America vacations.

He set his small Playmate cooler down in the sand and spread out his beach towel, looking around for someone he might recognize, someone whose name he could drop when his dad asked who he met there. He saw no one.

Michael stripped off his shirt and plugged his earphones into his iPod, pulling up the Night Ranger greatest hits album. It was his dad's music, but it was a taste he had acquired. He then slid his sunglasses over his ears and kicked back in the sunlight, humming the opening piano notes of "Sister Christian."

And then he drifted off to sleep.

*

Michael dreamed that he was swimming. He could no longer see the shore, and the water quickly grew dark, churning with fifteen-foot waves. Michael was shoved underwater by one of these waves, and when he opened his eyes he could not see the surface. He was rewarded with a spiking of pain from the salt instead. Michael tried to swim up, but he could no longer tell up from down. He knew that he was going to drown, and so he opened his mouth in a breathless scream.

*

Michael snapped awake, sat straight up, and realized that he was not the only one screaming.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the midday sunlight. Someone grabbed his shoulders. "Wake up, kid! Run!" The strong hands dragged Michael after him, giving him no choice but to abandon the beach and run. Still disoriented, Michael tripped in the sand. The man who had woken him up abandoned him for the parking lot.

When he looked up, he saw what had caused the panic. There on the beach was a man-sized crab. It advanced on a cowering college girl who scrambled backwards but could not find her way to her feet. The crab's entire body was pale yellow except for its two black, beady eyes. The crab moved with a speed it should not have had, especially for its size. The girl screamed, and tears poured down her face. Michael's sense of right and wrong prevailed over his sense of self-preservation. His heart beat out his head.

The crab was just close enough to swipe at the girl with its pincers open when Michael attacked. Shouting like a madman, he leapt over the girl down to the level the crab and the girl were on and brought his Playmate cooler down on the crab between its eyes. The shell split where the hard plastic corner connected. "Run!" Michael shouted at the girl. He felt painfully unprotected in just his board shorts and had to jump onto the crab's back to avoid being pierced by its wild pincers. Then Michael realized what the crab's weakness was. It was a _crab_. He steadied himself on the crab's back. Its short pincers and legs had no prayer of reaching him. He brought the cooler down on the same place again and felt the shell give more, this time into the softness underneath.

The crab decided at this point that retreat was a better option and began to side-shuffle toward the waves. Michael decided that he couldn't let it get away, especially if there was the chance that it would torture other people further down the beach. He attacked with a renewed ferocity until the crab's legs moved no more. By this point the crab was in the water, and as Michael pushed off the crab into the water, he inadvertently pushed the corpse out to sea.

Michael ran up to his spot to grab his towel and iPod. He didn't look back until he reached the walkway. That was when he saw more pale yellow figures emerging from the gulf waters in different shapes, and some in no shape at all. He recognized them, somehow, from a news broadcast from when he was much younger. Plodex.

He had already taken one of them down, and he could only count something like an even ten more.

"Damn it," muttered Michael. "I'm going to need my rapier."

He ran back to his car, ignoring the pain that seared into his feet from the heated blacktop. He fumbled with his keys until he finally managed to get one of the back doors of his clunker car open. Dumping the beach stuff inside, Michael reached for his fencing rapier. He pulled off the protective tip and then hotfooted it back to the beach where the first Plodex were walking onto the sand.

Michael remembered the Plodex because of his early fascination with Marrina at a young age. He'd had a crush on her in elementary school and had set about learning all he could about the woman from Alpha Flight who came from the sea. That was how he learned that she was a member of an alien race that was designed to infiltrate a planet, assume the form of the first living being that it touched, and use that form to somehow take over the world. Of course, most of that was from the tabloid exposés that came up after her death at the bottom of the sea, so Michael had no idea how reliable the information was. Nevertheless, it was all he had to go on, and it looked like he was the only one capable of fending off a possible invasion until the police got involved.

He wasn't doing this out of stupidity or delusions of grandeur. He was doing it out of a sense of duty. There were people that couldn't fight this off themselves, but Michael could do it for them. That was what made him do what he was about to do.

Michael walked quickly and with purpose. His right hand was extended outward with the rapier as he walked. He clenched his teeth. The sight of the yellowed creatures coming out of the depths of the ocean were more disgusting than the creations of any horror movie that Michael had ever seen. One of the creatures lay on the shore already, its gills flapping uselessly. It had assimilated and become a fish, and now it was going to die on land. Michael felt no pity. It was the others he had to think about. Already he could see two man-sized seagulls that looked more like they were ready to devour flesh than breadcrumbs, and a gigantic yellow Plodex in the shape of a water snake had left wriggling lines in the sand. The other Plodex were half-formed, unshaped creatures that were waiting for their first contact with a complex life form. They could wait.

The snake was Michael's first priority. It had the potential to get the furthest away. The gulls might be able to fly, but they still had gull-like instincts. As long as there was potential food around, they would stay put. The snake, on the other hand, had already moved further down the beach, to where the hysteria hadn't quite caught on yet.

Michael was in shape, sure, but running was something that had never quite caught on for him. His sport was about dodging and leaping back and forth. Being able to run a long distance wasn't for him, he'd thought. Today he was regretting that. The sweat poured off his body as he ran to catch up to the Plodex snake. He could no longer see it, but he could still follow its trail. The sand gave way under his feet as they pounded along the beach, as Michael prayed that he wasn't too late.

He reached the end of the trail, and stopped in his tracks, looking around. He could not see the snake even though he had reached the end of the trail. And then, when he turned around, it was right on top of him, fangs bared and aimed as his neck. Michael thrust upward with his rapier. The tip pierced the fleshy area underneath the Plodex snake's jaw up into its brain. For a moment it thrashed, but the thrashing served only to scramble the snake's brain further. Michael pulled out his sword, letting the Plodex's body crash to the ground.

Michael sprinted back to the area where the Plodex first landed and saw one of the two gulls on the ground, its blood seeping into the sand. The first officers on the scene had already dealt with it and had moved on to the second goal. They had judged the threats just as Michael had, ignoring the Plodex that had yet to assume a shape. Just as he had used the idea that the crab and snake were animals, which made them fair game to kill, he plunged his rapier through the heart of one of the six remaining Plodex for being an unformed alien. He repeated this on the second of the six, and again on the third. There were just three left. One, Michael saw, had become a gigantic mosquito, but its wings and legs could not support its updated mass. It would cause no trouble any time soon. Michael saw the fifth Plodex attempting to return to the sea and finished it off with his already bloodstained rapier. That was when everything changed.

A wet, slimy hand grasped the back of Michael's ankle. He turned around to kill the final Plodex and saw that it had been assimilated already. It had become…him. Its skin still had the pale yellow giveaway color, its pupils were oversized, and its hair was darker and matted down, but it was otherwise a carbon copy of Michael. The Plodex Michael was completely naked on its hands and knees, but it was no longer trying to attack Michael either. It had become a human, and, like humans, it understood reason.

"We have to get you out of here," Michael said suddenly, knowing that all of a sudden, everything had changed. He was responsible for this thing. It was a part of him as much as he had become a part of it. All eyes were on the policeman attempting to kill the final Plodex seagull. Michael wrapped his Plodex twin in an abandoned beach towel and guided the creature to his car.

Then, without looking back, he tore out of the parking lot and sped home. As soon as they were on the open road, Michael felt a cold hand on his arm. "Mi…chael?" it asked, and then it began to weep.

*

_**The Helix**_

From his mobile underwater base, _The Helix_, currently located in the dead center of the Gulf of Mexico, the man known only as Dr. Carbon sighed. He sat alone in the vast base, which was sewn together from a multitude of crashed alien shuttles that Carbon had founded on Chaparanga Beach during his travels. He kept the room dark so that the only thing that could be seen when he moved was his pristine white suit. Carbon himself possessed skin the color of pencil lead and of a rough, sandpapery complexion. His features appeared to be etched into the front of his bald head, and his eyes were milky white and without pupils.

"This won't do," muttered Carbon, clicking his fingers together. The sound grated as stone hit stone. "This won't do at all." He pressed a button on the smooth granite desktop. "Plodex experiment was a failure. Their potential is limited mostly by their inability to truly choose the being whose DNA structure they absorb. My time would be better spent pursuing other methods of conquest." Then he released the button and stood up from his desk.

Carbon was a geneticist whose specialty lay in the field of cloning. He was no Arnim Zola, but then, Carbon didn't want to have that kind of knowledge if it meant that he, too, would find his head where his stomach was one day. One of his experiments had already left him with a rough, protective layer of skin, and that was as far as he was willing to go when it came to altering himself.

Walking over to a bank of computers that held the combined knowledge of thirty different alien operating systems, Carbon placed his hand on the keypad. He punched in a series of twenty-digit codes as he rattled off the vocal commands. "Create a squad of thirty Crawlers for recovery of the Plodex bodies for a full failure analysis. Recombine subjects Cyclops, Angel, and Nightcrawler."

Crawlers were one of Carbon's few major successes. They were recombinant creatures that were made of mutant DNA. Their minds were programmable to whatever task was needed at the moment. Their only major drawback was that, due to their recombinant nature, cellular decay set in after twenty minutes. This made it necessary that they always have teleporting abilities. One of their components was always the DNA structure of the X-Man Nightcrawler, hence their nickname.

Within twenty minutes, the Crawlers had been created by the advanced computer system. They stepped from their enormous test tubes, hunched over with wings on their backs and demonic tails curled around their sides. "You have your mission," Carbon said monotonously. "The clock is ticking. Move out."

Then, in a cloud that smelled sickly of sulfur and brimstone, they disappeared.

*

Michael's dad wasn't home when he pulled in, which was all the better considering the situation. He guided the Plodex into the house and into his room, where he sat it down on his bed. Then he began to pace his room, trying to figure out what to do.

"Michael…?" asked the Plodex weakly.

Michael's face reddened. "Sorry, not used to alien life-forms taking my shape and speaking to me in English. Tell me you're not like the Body-Snatchers, are you? 'Cause when Dad gets home, he'll know you aren't me, so you know."

The Plodex-Michael sat there in silence for a moment. "Getting used to this form," it explained, as it worked its tongue around its mouth. "Speaking, this is wonderful."

"Yes, the joy of human speech," Michael said, holding out his arms in exasperation. "I'm sorry, but have you missed the fact that you're kind of a situation here? I should probably call the Avengers, or Alpha Flight, or somebody. Crap."

"No, you shouldn't do that," said the Plodex carefully, as if he were testing each word out individually.

"Yeah? And what if you decide you want to suddenly take over the world or something, like you were created to do? Isn't that what the whole Plodex thing is about? Infiltrating, assimilating, and then, you know, taking over the world?" Michael asked, shaking his head. He rummaged through the messy stack of clothing atop the dresser, throwing a pair of shorts back to his Plodex lookalike. "Put these on. This is weird enough already without you being naked."

The Plodex dressed as Michael anxiously looked out the window. He wondered if the police had gotten the reports of another of the creatures running away from the scene or if he was just being paranoid. When he turned around, his double was standing there. "You seem…worried," it said.

"I _am _worried," Michael responded. He shook his head again. "Look, can I give you a name or something? I keep thinking this is a nightmare because I keep thinking you're some weird, freaky, distorted _me._"

The Plodex stood there for a moment, drudging something up from the functional memories it had absorbed when it took Michael's form. "Call me Mar. It means 'sea' in Spanish, if I am not mistaken."

"Fine…Mar," Michael said, testing it out. "You understand how this is all weird to me, right? I'm just a kid who happened to think it was a good idea to get out his rapier and fight some sea aliens, and now I have an alien clone sitting in my bedroom wearing my clothes." He paused. "How do you know Spanish?"

"Assimilation gave me your functional memories. You know how to fence, and now I know how to fence. You know basic Spanish, and now I do, too. I am more than just a bodily duplicate," Mar explained, holding out his arms in an expression that mimicked Michael's from just moments before.

"What all did you absorb?" Michael asked. "Do you have, like my childhood memories somewhere in there, too?"

"No," Mar explained. "I have absorbed the skills that make you you, but I have none of the experiences. Assimilating as a human has granted me things known to only one other Plodex before, such as taste, free will, _emotion_."

"Oh, crap," Michael said. "Then…you're not mad at me about, you know, killing those other members of your species back on the beach, are you? I mean, I thought they were animalized, you know?"

"I think I have an easier time than most seeing things from your perspective," said Mar forgivingly.

Michael breathed slowly. "Right, what the hell am I going to do now?" He sighed. Playing the hero had seemed fun when he was slaying alien seagulls, but the instant one of them became human—scratch that, became _him_—everything had changed. "So you're basically human, right? 'Cept with the powers of a Plodex. Can you control water, y'know, like Marrina?"

"Somewhat," croaked Mar. He moved his arm and Michael watched as the water in a half-empty glass rose into the air. "But only with the skill of an adolescent."

"Wow," Michael said, looking at the water suspended in midair. "We have _got_ to figure out what to do with you before dad gets home."

There was a sudden crash downstairs. "We may not get that chance," said Mar. He sniffed the air. "Brimstone."

"Brimstone? What do you me—?" Michael began, but was cut off.

*BAMF!*BAMF!*BAMF!*

In three identical puffs of smoke appeared three creatures that seemed to have come out of a horror film. They were covered in dark blue fur from head to toe, and only possessed three digits on all four of their limbs. A pointed tail extended from each of their backsides, and gigantic, dark blue angel wings extended from their shoulder blades. Their eyes blazed with red energy.

"Plodex," they chanted as one, staring at Mar. "Plodex. Plodex."

"They're here for you, Mar!" Michael shouted. "Fight 'em, man!"

Michael drew his rapier and stepped forward to stab the creature in the eye. It looked more like a demon than anything, so it fit his rule about not maiming anything human.

The Crawler saw him coming and teleported out of the way, appearing behind Michael. It blasted him in the small of the back with its eye blasts, sending him into the dresser. He sank against it, moaning.

"Michael!" shouted Mar, but the Plodex had other things to worry about. The other two Crawlers advanced on him. Suddenly, the first was hit by a streak of water that hit with the force of a bullet. Its brain imploded from the force of the attack. The second Crawler saw what happened to its mate and teleported outside. It flapped on its angel wings, grunting like a feral beast.

Mar dove out the window in time to escape the eyebeams of the third Crawler as it turned its attention away from Michael. The water from the neighbor's pool rose up to meet him. He landed on it in a crouch and hovered there as if the floating globule of water were a flying carpet. He stared the flying Crawler in the eye. "Genetic aberrations, both of us," he muttered. "We have the same father."

"Carbon," grunted the Crawler, sending spittle flying. Mar manipulated the liquid and send it flying back in its owner's face at supersonic speed. He watched blood specks float up on the creature's wing with a sense of accomplishment.

That accomplishment came too early. The Crawler that remained in Michael's room struck Mar from behind with its eyebeams before teleporting out the window onto Mar's floating waterbed. "Plodex," it spat.

Mar threw up a wall of water, knowing that all it would take was a single touch by the Crawler for it to be able to teleport him with it back to wherever it came from. Mar wasn't sure how he knew its intentions for certain, but he did. It was like they had been encoded, and he could read them like any other written message. To him, it was as obvious as a neon sign. He took it to be part of his Plodex nature, the ability to read the genetic code of other creatures. He wasn't sure if that was more on the interesting or disturbing side.

Still, it was too much for Mar to be going up against multiple foes with the ability to be anywhere at once. The flying Crawler's prehensile tail whipped around Mar's neck. Then, with a single *BAMF!*, he was gone.

The other remaining Crawler teleported back into Michael's room and scooped up its fallen comrade in order to obey Dr. Carbon's cardinal rule: leave no evidence behind. Michael stirred in time to witness the Crawler disappear in another cloud of purple smoke. He scrambled to the window and looked outside at the neighbor's pool water all over his front yard.

"Mar…" he whispered.

*

"_Police say that they fought off gigantic, yellow-tinged sea creatures on Venice Beach today. Some witnesses claim that a beachgoer-turned-vigilante helped defeat several of the creatures. However, police are still mystified, as the corpses of these creatures disappeared within an hour of their initial defeat. More on this story as it develops…_" said the newscaster on the television screen as Michael and his father ate dinner that night. Michael picked at his scalloped potatoes halfheartedly. He had barely managed to get his room back in shape before his dad got home, let alone had time to come up for an excuse as to why the front lawn was hopelessly soaked.

"Hey, Michael, you all right?" asked Michael's dad. Dorian Corson was a software designer, but that made him no less in tune with the needs of the people in the real world. "Something's bugging you, I can tell."

"Sorry, dad, but I can't eat right now," Michael said, putting his napkin on his plate and scooting out from the table. "Don't worry about it. I'll be all right in the morning."

Then, ignoring the concerned look on his father's face, Michael went upstairs and pulled out a notebook and pencil. He let out his frustration the only way his inner scientist knew how as he scribbled out the tentative title of his paper: "Rehabilitating the Conqueror: The Plodex Solution."

*

_**The Helix**_

Dr. Carbon stood over his desk, computing his next experiment in the world of cloning, recombining, and playing god. He drew up a computer simulation of a DNA strand and began nonchalantly taking apart the amino acids and deconstructing the information even as it all ran through his brain. He didn't turn his head even as the air changed slightly around him, the surefire signal of a teleporter entering the room.

"Hello, Lieutenant Narfi," said Dr. Carbon, piecing together a new rung on the ladder of life. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Dr. Carbon," Narfi said. "Sorry to barge in on you and your work, but I foresaw that you might have something of interest for me. I'm not quite interested in the stem soldiers anymore, as we discussed before, you see, but it's my understanding that you had a failed experiment happen yesterday."

"Failures are learning experiences," Carbon said, sniffing. "You don't need to rub it in."

"Sorry, didn't expect you to get sensitive," Narfi said. "That's not the point at all. You see, I'm building something. A team, of sorts. In the next few months, you're going to begin hearing about a new generation of heroes or some nonsense, and I need something to counteract that. It has to be a teenager, and, quite frankly, I'd be willing to pay a few million for it."

Carbon tried to keep his eyeballs in his sockets. The Plodex batch that had hatched his most recent failure had only cost him a few hundred thousand on the black market, and the seller had seemed more than happy to get rid of them. A few million could advance his personal research and fund many future projects. "You're talking about Mar, right? Please, follow me."

Carbon led Narfi to a hallway where some of his more promising failures were kept. Most of them were along the veins of sentient plant life, but a few of them, Mar's cell included, held more mobile creatures. "Tell me you're here to get me out of this prison cell," Mar said, looking up at Narfi.

"Open the door," Narfi said, looking at Carbon. The scientist obeyed. "Of course I am, son," Narfi said, his guise shifting from that of a twenty-year-old to that of a fifty-year-old.

"Thank you," Mar said, edging closer to Narfi. There was a crackling of electricity, and then Mar's body crumpled to the floor.

"Sorry, I get a kick out of giving and taking back false hope," Narfi said. He turned to Carbon. "The money's already in your account, Doc." Then he grasped Mar's unconscious form by the shoulder and teleported away.

Emerging into the dank corridors of the Superhuman Deployment Division, Narfi thrust Mar's unconscious form on the first soldier he came into contact with. "Tranquilize him and then put him in a Freezer cell, soldier."

"Do you want this one inserted into the deployment rotation?" the soldier asked.

Narfi shook his head. "No, this one's meant for a special mission. File him into the Young Masters of Evil folder for me, would you?"

*

_**Venice, Florida**_

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" shouted Michael as the knocking on the door increased. "Come on, man!"

Michael opened the door to be greeted by a man who appeared to be in his thirties with dark hair and thin spectacles. "Hello, Michael."

"Hi," Michael said cautiously. "Look, we don't take any credit card offers."

The man laughed. "Michael Corson, right? Sorry, I should have called ahead. My name is Dr. Walter Newell. I read your paper—the one on the Plodex?"

Michael's eyes widened. "Oh. Please, come in, Mr. Newell."

Walter stepped inside and sat down in the living room. "Now, I'm not sure how you came into contact with the Plodex or what you're basing your information on, but I've already sent the paper ahead to the Avengers and to Alpha Flight. They found it very interesting, Mr. Corson."

"Oh, really?" Michael asked. His throat had gone cotton-ball dry. He wasn't sure what to say.

"Yes, they did," Walter continued. "So interesting, in fact, that when they found out you were moving to Fort Myers, they decided to sponsor your internship at the local marine research center. What would you say to that, Mr. Corson?"

"This is for real?" Michael asked. Walter nodded, grinning. "Then yes. Yes, yes, yes. This is what I've wanted for a long time, Mr. Newell."

"I know," said Walter. "Believe you me, I have a feeling that this move is going to turn out to be the start of the rest of your life, Mr. Corson. I have a very, _very_ good feeling about it…"

_**The End**_

_Author's Note_

By now, you know how Michael's story changes. If not, go read the first five issues of Young Avengers immediately after this. It'll help you out a lot. This story is intended to fill in the back-story of an original character so that, hopefully, you'll all have a better feel for just who Michael Corson is as a character. That said, because he's an original character, thank you all for going through the reading of this. You'll notice I pulled characters like the Plodex, Mar, and the Crawlers all from continuity, just to give it that fan-fic punch and because, well, put together, they're all a really cool fit for Dr. Carbon. He's also an original villain, and I hope to use him in upcoming Young Avenger issues.

Anyway, I would probably say to keep on the lookout for more of these back-story one-shots from me about the Young Avengers as the series evolves. Face it, I don't have time in the midst of a large storyline about six kids and a shadow against a mysterious government organization to fill you in on where each of them is coming from, so hopefully this helps, and hopefully, on top of it all, it's good, entertaining reading.

So, rather than ramble on an on about what went on behind getting here, I'm going to leave you while you still remember the story you read to get to the author's note.

Thanks for reading this far,

Hunter Lambright (3/29/09)


	3. Chapter 1

**Young Avengers #1: "Hair-Trigger Start" (**_**Legacy Lost**_** Part 1)**

**By Hunter Lambright**

"_Wake up." _

The voice hissed across the deathly calm of the Freezer. Steam rose from the frosted stasis tubes, each of which housed a man, woman, or child, all decorated in the pastel colors of super-men and –women, all cryogenically frozen. Some had not been released since their imprisonment in the late forties.

It was late at night in the Freezer, around the time when the one man on monitor duty fell asleep like clockwork, around eight minutes or so before the coffeemaker would announce a fresh pot and inadvertently awaken the shamefaced security manager. It was hard to blame the man. Monitor duty in the Freezer was like watching plants grow. Nothing ever seemed to change.

"_Wake up, Bryon_," hissed the voice from the shadows. No, that was wrong. The voice _was _the shadow. The room maintained its eerie stillness for a single moment longer—and then that changed with a movement almost invisible to the untrained eye. In one of the stasis tubes a pair of eyes flickered open. They belonged to a teenage boy in a dark costume that covered everything except his eyes, mouth, and nostrils.

"_Good," _said the shadow. _"You need to move. You have only seven minutes to escape, Bryon."_

Bryon looked into the shadow, craning his stiff neck, but knew he would see nothing. He then flicked the clasps on the inside of his cryogenic cell and, with a heaving grunt, forced the wings open on either side of him. Steam poured freely from the vacated tube as the two halves split. Bryon turned, but the shadow was gone, replaced by a brightly lit corner.

There was no time to waste. Bryon hauled himself out of the chamber and looked around. There was no one in sight. Of course, that really wasn't a surprise. Who would be patrolling the area anyway? Bryon darted toward the exit on the far side of the room. Someone had lined their capsules up alphabetically heading away from the door, which made his escape somewhat more of a pain.

It pained him to run past his fellow heroes, but he knew that he could accomplish nothing until they thawed, and waiting for that was a luxury he didn't have. As he ran, he faintly wondered what year it was. He had last been thawed in 1959, sent to recapture some sensitive nuclear information from Soviet spies. How much time had passed since then?

Bryon reached the door and pulled it open. No alarm went off. His shadow had taken care of that as well, it seemed. He began to turn toward the stairwell, but stopped with a moment of sudden realization. "No," he whispered. "They don't get me back again."

His legs mechanically down the corridor. The door at the end was nondescript, which led Bryon to believe he'd chosen the right direction. This was not a room they would have labeled. Only those who needed to be there would know which room to be in. He neared the door, only for the nearest shadow to leap out at him. "_What are you doing?_" it asked. "_You must escape! You don't have time for this!_"

"No!" Bryon spat. "The last I was let out, they showed me their dossier on me. I know it's here—they will _not _be keeping it."

The shadow did not respond. Instead, it melted away, leaving Bryon to decide his own fate. It had set the escape in motion—it would not be held responsible if he botched it up on the way out.

Bryon kicked open the door to the file room and dashed in, prepared to catch anyone off guard. The room was empty. He saw the dark green filing cabinets lined up against the wall. On the opposite wall was a glassy screen, banked with a tabletop inset with buttons and flashing lights, the likes of which he had only seen in one of the old alien attack film strips before he had been recruited for the Hiroshima Cleanup—before his life had been taken away from him.

The filing cabinets were slightly more advanced than the ones he remembered, and it took a few seconds of extra button-pushing and drawer-jiggling for Bryon to get the "B" drawer open. His hands quickly flipped through the thick plastic folders, but saw no sign of his. He cursed inwardly. Had they withdrawn it recently, planning to defrost him for an upcoming mission?

"_Try 'Y'_," hissed the shadow. It had been watching the entire time.

Bryon ducked to the far right end of the wall of cabinets and opened the "Y" drawer with far less difficulty than the first. He pulled the drawer all the way out, knowing the file he was looking for would likely be toward the back. He read off the names under his breath as he flipped through. "Young Allies—this is it, Young Avenger," he muttered, pulling out his file. He took care to make sure no old photographs fell out. "Wait, what is that?"

Setting his file carefully aside, and growing ever more aware of his dwindling amount of lead-time, he took a look at the file behind his, titled "Young Avengers." The file was several inches thick, and seeing as time was of the essence, Bryon knew he had no time to waste seeing if the file was connected to him or not. He hefted it out and stacked the two files together. "Which way?"

"_Up,_" said the shadow, disappearing in the light of the hallway.

Bryon looked up and down the hallway. "What do you mean?" he asked. The last word was nearly cut off by the blaring of a siren emanating from klaxons set up in even intervals down the hallways. Red lights began flashing, and Bryon could already hear the sounds of footsteps marching en masse.

"_Figure it out,_" said the shadow, melting away for good this time. In his sprint toward the record room, Bryon had trouble remembering his path. Turning it around to backtrack it felt near-impossible, and yet those stairs were the only set he had come across. That much Bryon knew for sure. He began to run, but his pace was hampered by the files he carried. One wrong move and all of his information would fly across the halls. He could not let that happen.

A flicker of black above his head caught his eye. Bryon couldn't be sure if it was the shadow assisting him or his imagination. He looked up and saw a hatch built into the ventilation system—an ugly set of metal vents strung along the hallways, too far underground to bother with covering them up for the sake of scenery. Bryon pried off the vent and put the files inside. He just had time to haul his cape inside the man-sized shaft and replace the cover before the footsteps reached the hallway he'd been standing in.

Two sets of incoming footsteps were converging, and Bryon was certain that they'd determined his location. He shrank deeper inside the vent so that he could not see outside, and hoped that they could not see him. The footsteps stopped.

"Any sign of him?" asked the first officer. His voice was deeper, and Bryon could tell from the way the man asked that he pulled rank. The question was incisive and demanding, and somehow it was evident that the man blamed whoever he was questioning for his escape.

The second man did not answer right away. "N-no, sir," he finally stammered. "We're still checking s-some of the lower facilities, on the chance he went down instead of up, but r-right now, we c-can't find a trace of him."

"What about his tracking chip?" the first man demanded.

"S-sir? Those weren't approved by Congress. The bill died in the House," replied the second man shakily.

The first man laughed, which caused more of a sinister effect than a humorous one. "Since when have we listened to Congress, officer? Since WHEN?!" he shouted. "I want you to find him in the next fifteen minutes, or it's your job, soldier. And I want the rest of the Popsicles implanted with tracking chips immediately—am I clear, soldier?"

"Y-yes," the officer mumbled.

"Yes _what_, officer?"

"Y-yes, Lieutenant."

The officer's group marched off immediately, but the Lieutenant's shadow remained alone in the hallway. Bryon could see from the way his back moved that he was breathing heavily from his outburst. Then, a second shadow emerged beside his—this one in the shape of a woman. Bryon got over his momentary shock of imagining a woman in military quickly—what she had to say was far more important than what she was.

"Lieutenant, sir? I have some information for you regarding the escapee," she said quickly. "It's rather important, I think you'll see."

"What is it, then?" asked the Lieutenant, tempering himself.

The woman shuffled through several sheets of paper in her hand. "The boy was in the file room, it seems. He took a few of the hard copies, but it looks like he wasn't released anytime recently, because he didn't even touch the computer. Our digital copies of the files are still intact, but he didn't just take his, sir." She paused. "He took the Young Avengers file."

"The what?" asked the Lieutenant. "Who were they? I don't remember any team by that name being incarcerated in the Freezer."

"That's because they weren't," said the woman. "The hard copy was filed under that name as an in-joke by some idiot six levels up. The file was then transferred down to us earlier last year when someone upstairs realized they had little to no use for it. You may know the file better, Lieutenant, as the Legacy clause from the Avengers Failsafe Program."

"The chosen successors to the Avengers," said the Lieutenant in awe. "And the Young Avenger now holds them in his hands. You realize we can't let these names get out. If they do, someone could amass a superhuman _army_—someone with interests directly conflicting with ours."

"Are you saying, sir, that we recruit them? We have our own copies still. There is still time."

"No," said the Lieutenant. Bryon saw him shake his head from the shadow. "No, that could take too long, and there's always the chance of them refusing. I'm afraid we don't have a choice. We have to eliminate them."

_**The Adirondack Mountains—Later**_

It was a long time before Bryon decided he could finally stop running. His enhanced stamina and endurance only took him so far, and his sweat had gone from a nuisance to a serious trouble. It seemed that, after being frozen so long, the body had trouble readjusting to regular temperatures above freezing.

Bryon looked around for a moment before deciding to nestle himself into a pine grove that would give him some cover if someone came looking. He sat down on a bed of needles and put his arms around he knees, breathing heavily. The files were set off to the side. Bryon flipped back his mask and let his cape fall back to the ground. His face was still perspiring profusely, and a drop fell from the tip of his nose to the ground. Bryon then pulled off his gloves and laid them aside, so that he would be able to flip through the pages.

He first grabbed his own file. Everything inside was as he remembered it from the first time he had seen the file—the pictures of his family, the documentation of how he had gotten his powers (so far as they knew), the extensive interviews and reports from his only missions out of the Freezer. All of it remained intact.

Finally, after his fit of nostalgia had passed, Bryon looked at the second file. Its thickness alone was intimidating. He flipped it open to the first page and began to read. It contained something called the Legacy File, a portion of the Avengers Failsafe Program. Bryon wasn't interested in all of that, however. He was more interested in the most recent date on the file—almost fifty years since the last time he had seen the light of day. "This is a joke," Bryon said to himself. "This must be some kind of training exercise."

"_Then why execute the Legacies?_" asked the shadow, startling Bryon from behind. Even he didn't know the power behind the shadow. He only knew that it had given him his powers and missions, and now it had saved him as well.

Bryon shrugged. "It's not for me to decide." He set the file on the ground and began to gather his cape, mask, and gloves.

"_Your escape has set this in motion, and you taking this file was not in the plan,_" said the shadow.

Bryon shook his head. "I am not to blame. Taking the file was a mistake."

"_Your mistake_," retorted the shadow. "_That is why correcting it has become your new mission, Bryon. You must save the Legacies—as many as you are able to, before we even attempt to retrieve your colleagues from the Freezer. If you do not, the future of the world is in questionable hands._"

"I'm not sure if you have realized," Bryon spat, "but this _is_ the future to me! How many wars have been fought since I was taken captive? How much of my life has died?"

The shadow considered its answer carefully. "_Then it is your choice, Bryon. If you choose to move on with your life, so be it. However, think about this: if you choose to do nothing, how many other lives will end simply because I chose to release you from incarceration? How many more must die to pay the price for your freedom?_"

"That's not fair!" Bryon exclaimed. "Why does it have to be that way?"

"_What in life __**is**__ fair?_" the shadow asked solemnly.

Bryon stood for a moment, looking from his file to the other, weighing out the thickness of one life versus the thickness of forty or more. "Fine. How do I do it, then?"

"_You may get tired of hearing me say this, Bryon, but—_" the shadow chuckled, "_—you figure it out._"

Then it melted back into the darkness of the pine trees, leaving Bryon alone with only the ghosts of the past to keep him company.

_**Tak'kawa Square, Wakanda**_

People milled about freely in the open-air marketplace centered in one of the largest towns in Wakanda. Fruits and vegetables of every color sat in wicker bins as men and women mingled among the stalls in their vibrant clothing. In the center of the square, ringed by pathways for carts and vehicles, was an area where people chatted and caught up on what was happening in the world each day.

It was there that a boy and girl sat, talking to each other on one of the thin wooden benches in the square. "You really did it, Rala? Last night?" asked the boy, his white teeth shining brightly against his ebony skin.

"Yes, Tiko. I strung them outside the chief building, and then knocked and ran. The poachers never saw what hit them!" she exclaimed, laughing.

Tiko smiled back at her. "So it's true? You really are the striped goddess' chosen one?"

Rala nodded. "Are you saying you believe me?"

"No, I'm trying to figure out if you're crazy or not," Tiko said, laughing.

There was a commotion near the west end of the square just then, as a cart overturned and several shopkeepers and shoppers gasped. Men clothed from head to toe in black shoved their way through the square. The leader held onto a device that looked similar to a GPS unit. "One side!" the gunmen shouted. "Move!"

"I'll prove it," Rala said with a grin. Within a split-second, her garments changed into a thick, red-orange layer of fabric, topped with a feral mask atop her head. She ran to the front of the square where she stood in authority. "Turn and leave this place! These people are under my protection!"

The man with the GPS looked up, the red light at the top blinking as he pointed the device at her. "Rala Shurat, alias Red Tigress, your legacy is about to be snuffed," he said with an American accent. The gunmen shuffled around Rala, pointing their barrels up at her.

She held up her hands, realizing too late that she was in way over her head. "I surrender," she whispered.

"Tough luck," said the leader. He snapped his fingers, and the sharp report of gunfire echoed throughout the square. The crowd screamed in shock as the Red Tigress fell to the ground, undoubtedly dead.

"Rala!" screamed Tiko in dismay. He reached his friend's fallen form and stared into her empty eyes. Then he looked upward, seeing red—but the gunmen were already gone, like they hadn't been there at all.

The only evidence that they had even existed was bleeding out onto the sand.

_**New York City**_

"How do they not go crazy?!" exclaimed Bryon, his voice barely audible over the sound of honking horns and vulgar curses from road-enraged drivers. "The noise never stops!"

"_Focus_," said the shadow.

"Right," Bryon muttered halfheartedly. He had hitchhiked out of the mountains (after stealing a change of clothes from some sleeping campers) and been dropped off rather quickly when he had asked the year. It had been a relief to both Bryon and the truck driver. The driver was able to get rid of the mentally ill teenager, and Bryon was able to get back off the road, safely away from the insanity of traffic. "I'm a bit overwhelmed right now."

"_Understatement_," said the shadow, melting away before Bryon could retort.

"It looks like we've arrived anyway," Bryon said, looking up. Across the street, was a simple apartment building, no more exceptional than the twenty that surrounded it. It had taken some difficulty, but Bryon had finally pinpointed the first and closest Legacy to one of two addresses. According to her file, she was supposed to be at this location on most weekends and holidays. He hoped she would be there tonight, because if she wasn't, he would have to add breaking and entering to his list of less-than-legal activities.

"_Ready?_" asked the shadow, reappearing yet again.

Bryon shook his head, looking up nervously at the apartment building. "Let me get in costume first. If I can help it, I don't want anyone to be able to recognize me once this is all over."

"_Then what's the plan?_"

"It's simple—kidnap Cassie Lang."

*

"You know, T'Challa, now's probably not the best time for you to be calling." Carol Danvers stared at the screen, where the Black Panther's visage stared back down at her. "You know things have been pretty shaky since you went off and formed your own team of Avengers. No one's exceptionally thrilled with you still for that one."

"I understand," said the Black Panther icily. "I would not have called if I did not believe it to be a matter of the utmost urgency."

"Yeah?" asked Carol, raising an eyebrow. "Fine, lay it on me."

"I would feel more comfortable disclosing this information with Captain America. Is he there? I will not ask another time," asked the Black Panther, his dark mask completely devoid of emotion. Though she couldn't see his face, it was obvious that he was angry underneath.

Carol shook her head. "I'm in here, and I have no idea whether or not Cap's in the building. I can take a message, if you'd like, or—"

"Is something wrong, Carol?" Steve Rogers poked his head in the door. His mask was pulled backwards, but from the neck down he was decked out in red, white, and blue. His eye caught on the imposing figure staring down from the screen. "I've got this."

"Captain," said the Panther, looking at Steve. "I believe we may have a bit of a problem."

"Then let's hear it," said Steve, leaning back against a control panel.

Black Panther nodded. "I received word today that one of my countrywomen, Rala Shurat, was assassinated. The gunmen were specifically there for her and disappeared after they succeeded. I hope you can confirm for me that the fact that she was chosen as my Legacy File for your government is merely a coincidence, because if not, Wakanda and your country will have a serious problem."

Steve's brow furrowed. "I'm not sure I follow you, T'Challa. What Legacy File are you talking about?"

"I'm surprised you've forgotten so quickly, Captain," said the Panther, almost disgusted. It was obvious he believed that he was being played for a fool. "Allow me to refresh your memory, Captain. Not long after the Onslaught fiasco, I received a request from your government to find what they called a 'Legacy,' someone in one of the generations below me who I would find fit to replace me so that there would always be a Black Panther figure in the Avengers in the event of my death. It was supposed to be a part of a so-called Avengers Failsafe Program. You're trying to tell me you don't remember this?"

Steve shook his head. "I'm sorry, T'Challa, but I honestly don't." He turned to Warbird. "What about you, Carol?"

"I wasn't asked," she said, her arms folded across her chest. "Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't ask me, anyway." She shrugged.

"I'll check around," Steve said, "but I can't remember this at all. What do you think the chances are that they went ahead and picked our Legacies without asking us?"

"Knowing your government? The chances are very high. They may have asked me out of diplomatic courtesy, or unfamiliarity with the nature of my powers. Or they may have asked me, as I suspect, in order to eliminate the next in my line," the Black Panther said. "If I find out that the latter is the case, then it will be an act of war, Captain."

"We'll check into this, T'Challa, and keep you posted on what we find out about this failsafe. Look, I know our relationship has been strained lately, but let us look into this before doing anything brash. For all we know, there are more Legacy Files out there being targeted right now," said Steve. "I don't want this to escalate out of control."

"If that is the case, then I will retract my threat," said the Panther. "However, if I find out that I was right, and that any of you had a hand in covering the truth from me—there will be hell to pay." The screen then went blank.

"Hm. That was ominous," said Carol, shaking her head. "Do you have any idea what he was talking about?"

"No," said Steve, pacing the length of the control room. "I wonder if it's possible. Could the government really have a file designating who they would have take our place if we died?"

"I'll ask around," said Carol. "If it's true—and at that point, we don't even know if that's the case—then T'Challa might be right. I don't want any kids' lives to be on my shoulders if we don't look into this."

Steve nodded. "I'll ask the rest of the Avengers if they were asked to name a Legacy, too. If we can find anyone who might have a name for us, someone who remembers who was asking, then we might have a lead. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," Carol confirmed. She let slip a small smile. "Never a dull moment, is there?"

"No, there isn't," Steve said, shaking his head. "But what would we do without constant crises and disasters waiting to happen? Problems like this, and how we react to them—it's what makes us the Avengers."

*

"_I can't believe you're going to kidnap the daughter of an Avenger,_" muttered the shadow, as Bryon neared the fence. "_What, are you going to kidnap __**all**__ of the Legacies, too?_"

"It was the only way I thought I could ensure her safety," Bryon mumbled, catapulting up onto the fire escape. Cassie's apartment was on the second floor. He knew he had to be careful not to arouse anyone's attention on his ascent, though.

"_Isn't she in the safest place she could possibly be right now, though?_" the shadow asked skeptically. "_If this is her father, she's with an Avenger. If she's with her mother and stepfather, she's with a cop._"

"You are the one who told me to figure it out," Bryon shot back. "I'm working the best that I can right now. I do not like it either, but it's the only way I think I can get them to listen to me—either the Avengers or the police—to get them to take me seriously."

"_By looking like a super-villain?_" the shadow asked, but Bryon ignored him.

"Which window?" Bryon tiptoeing along the fire escape, and hoping that the answer didn't have anything to do with scaling the outside of the building.

"_Second on the left._"

The window in question was just outside the reach of the fire escape, but Bryon knew he could make the jump without any difficulty. It was even already cracked open, as if she'd been expecting him. Lilac curtains fluttered outside, and Bryon could hear the teenager talking to someone, presumably on the phone. He had to be in and out, quickly, or else he would end up botching the entire operation. He looked around once more outside, and, convinced no one was staring at him, he vaulted over the iron bars of the fire escape and curled acrobatically inside the window, landing on one knee.

"Cassie Lang, you must come with me. Your very life is at stake," he said in pure cornball fashion.

Cassie screamed and dropped the phone. Bryon leaned over her to pick up the phone. "Sorry if I frightened you! Please, don't—" But she already had. The emergency button built into her wristwatch was already blinking red.

"_Red blinking is never good,_" said the shadow. "_Told you this was a bad idea!_"

"I'll fix it," said Bryon. He reached out to grab Cassie's shoulder to calm her. She had shrunk back into the corner against her headboard. This time, she didn't scream. She had been kidnapped enough in her lifetime to be able to maintain her composure.

The door was suddenly kicked in and bright light poured in from the next room, overpowering the light from Cassie's desk lamp. Silhouetted in the doorway was a man wearing a dark blue dress shirt and slacks. The holster at his waist was empty, his gun drawn and pointed directly at Bryon. His face was contorted into a mask of rage and surprise.

"Sir, this isn't what it looks li—" Bryon began, but he was cut off.

"Put your hands up, criminal!" shouted Cassie's stepfather, the police officer. "You picked the wrong girl tonight, sleazeball!"

"_That worked well,_" muttered the shadow as Bryon's hands rose reluctantly into the air.

_Author's Note_

The Young Avenger is a Timely Comics superhero. You can read more about him online, searching JJ Nevin's site.

Also, more about the Freezer and the nature of the Golden Agents can be read in Prelude #1.

_**Hunter Lambright**_


	4. Chapter 2

_**Hampton Marine Research Center, Fort Myers, Florida**_

_**Yesterday**_

It was the end of a long day at the Hampton Marine Research Center. The beachside facility was home to hundreds of ongoing projects and experiments involving everything from urchins to algae. Professors and researchers alike spent hours cataloguing data and publishing results, though the tedium of such tasks often led them to pick up young protégés, such as Michael Corson. The sixteen-year-old had held a fascination with the ocean since he was born. That fascination had blossomed into a well-developed curiosity and enthusiasm, which made him the perfect research assistant at the facility.

It wasn't until the early evening's rays of light crept to the point that they penetrated beneath the blinds that Professor Walter Sams looked from his microscope to his watch. He studied Michael as he diligently scribbled changes in count and concentration of the algae samples for a moment before he said, "Well, son, the evening's wasting. What say you cut out early tonight, maybe catch some of your friends? With the amount of hours you put in here, I'd say you deserve a break. What do you think?"

Michael's pencil stopped moving. He looked up. "Sir? With all due respect, my friends are pretty much limited to the staff around here. The ocean…well, lately it's my life."

Professor Sams sized Michael up. The thin, muscular teen looked more like he belonged on a surfboard than in a laboratory. "That's exactly what I'm saying, Michael. Take the rest of the day, have some fun. The algae will still be here tomorrow."

"If you say so, sir," Michael said, cocking a bemused eyebrow. "Don't complain tomorrow about how much you had to do yourself, though."

"Believe me," said Sams, "you won't hear a word out of me. Now go on, get out of here!" He made shooing gestures. Michael smiled, then grabbed his backpack and stepped out of the room, leaving Professor Sams alone with his algae.

The day outside was beautiful. There were still hours of daylight to be had, and Michael considered hitting the beach for awhile. Maybe he would see some of his classmates there, he thought, shaking his head. The dark-haired boy slung his backpack into the backseat of an ancient stick shift car before piling into the front seat. He cranked open the windows to let the hot out and the breeze in, just as he would have even if his air conditioning worked. It was nice out after all, thought Michael. He pulled out of Hampton's parking lot and headed for the Fort Myers Beach.

It seemed that there were a lot of people with the same idea, because Michael had a difficult time finding a parking spot. He finally gave up and took one far from the sand before hotfooting it barefoot across the blacktop until he reached the beach, leaving his shoes in the car. It wasn't long before he had crossed the wooden slatted bridge and was on the beach along with what seemed like half the population of Fort Myers. The heat came up in waves over the sand, and Michael was soon forced to unbutton his cotton shirt, opening his lithe torso to the cooling wind. He tried not to linger too long near the volleyball net, where a group of college-aged girls were giggling and slapping a cracked, gray volleyball back and forth. He spared them a moment of time before walking on.

Michael spied a few of his classmates in the water. It was mostly the jocks and surfer crew, angling this way and that along the surf on boogey boards. The gulf water was too calm for surfing without a storm on the way, but that didn't stop several of the boys from straddling their boards in the water anyway. He quickened his pace as he went past them, doubting they even recognized him.

Finally, after he had gone on for quite awhile, Michael checked his watch. He was already ten minutes late, and he knew his dad would be worried. Then Michael patted the pocket of his cargo shorts and realized that his cell phone was back at the parking lot in his car. He turned around and began jogging back the way he came. He was only halfway back when he heard the volleyball girls screaming, and in the open space of the beach, it wasn't hard to see why.

A squadron of black-suited men wielding some kind of high-powered rifle had hustled onto the beach, spiraling out from a central point. _That means they're looking for something,_ Michael realized. Then he thought darkly, _Or someone. _

There was something unsettling about the way they moved that made Michael realize that they weren't the good guys. The gunmen weren't on a drug bust or a terrorist raid. They were mercenaries. It was a gut instinct, but Michael's hadn't been wrong yet. A quick scan showed him that the other beachgoers were also reacting with panic. That was good. It gave him time to think. It gave him time to _act_.

Everything he needed was on the beach. It was time to play the hero—no, it was time to _be_ the hero. Call it an innate sense of nobility, or call it an innate sense of stupidity. He had trained for years in fencing, and while he didn't have his preferred tool at hand, it had given him an uncanny knack for being able to see when and where opponents were vulnerable. Even though his was trained into him, he called it his Karnak Sense after his second-favorite Avenger. His first favorite was Stingray.

There were seven gunmen. Michael had counted them as he ran and ducked, blending in with the scrambling beachgoers. The first gunman went down with a smack to the back of the head with a chunk of driftwood. Michael had positioned himself under a fallen canopy umbrella until the man had gotten close and swiveled around to check behind him. Michael knew that the first was the easiest. It would be harder after this.

He heard shouts soon, and that let him know that the first man's absence had been noted. The second gunman came and knelt by his compatriot, checking for a pulse. He turned his head and caught sight of Michael before shouting. Michael kicked sand up into the man's eyes, then whipped a beach towel around the gun barrel, forcing it down into the sand. A swift kick to the back of the head took the second one down, but the other five were already running.

That was when Michael realized he was in over his head. The adrenaline rush, the initial feeling of invincibility was gone. The confidence high was dashed as soon as another gunman shouted, "That's him! It's the target!" The blood drained out of Michael's face. They weren't here for someone else. They were here for _him._

He began to run. There were three sharp gunshots, and Michael could suddenly no longer feel his legs. His stomach scraped the sand as he skidded to a halt, leaving three thin, bloody trails behind him. Darkness crept at the edges of his vision until, like his confidence before it, his consciousness faded away into black.

**Young Avengers #2: Stagger Pace (**_**Legacy Lost**_** Part 2)**

**By Hunter Lambright**

_**The Burdick Apartment, New York City**_

"Sir, please put the gun down." The Young Avenger held his arms up in surrender. His dark green bodysuit seemed to have paled to match his panicked face now that they were caught, and Bryon knew that he was in no position to make demands.

The officer had to chuckle at that. "You're the perp, and you're ordering the cop whose house you broke into. That's a laugh."

"Blake, stop," said Cassie Lang, huddled on her bed. "Maybe you should listen to him."

"He just tried to kidnap you, Cassie!" shouted her stepfather, brandishing the gun. "This isn't the first time this has happened! He's probably just stalling while he waits for backup!"

Bryon shook his head, careful to leave his hands in their upright position. This had not gone according to plan. He had severely messed up. What was supposed to have gone smoothly, in an attempt to force the police and Avengers to take the threat he was trying to _protect_ Cassie from seriously, had turned into a serious botch-up with a police officer pointing a gun at his forehead. Today was not his day.

"Now, get on your knees, and put your hands behind your back—but not under your cape! Put 'em where I can see them," Blake said, moving forward. Cassie cringed, but now she was pulling back from her stepfather's rash behavior instead of fear of her attacker.

"Yes, sir, officer," Bryon said, folding his arms over his cape as he knelt on the floor. Then he cocked his head to the side. "You know, I heard a rumor. Would you believe that many Nazis only had blue eyes because they were blind?"

"What are you talking about?" Blake muttered rhetorically.

"_I can't believe I still remember that_," hissed the shadow. "_For you, we learned those cues just a few months ago. For me, it's been years._" It then shot out from its hiding place under Cassie's bed and darted into Blake's face. His eyes were covered with the shadow's opaque, intangible body. Blake gasped and clawed at his face, but the shadow, like a ghost, slipped through his fingers like so much nothingness. A bestial scream emanated from Blake's throat as he clawed and only managed to scratch his own face.

"Now, Cassie!" shouted the Young Avenger in pure cheese-ball fashion, seizing the moment. He held out a hand to her. "Your life depends on it!"

"N-no," Cassie said, shaking her head uncertainly. "I can't."

The shadow directed its voice at her with extreme urgency, even as the rest of it continued to keep Blake occupied. "_You have to go __**now,**__ Cassie! You are being targeted, and every moment you are here puts your mother and stepfather in danger! You can trust Bryon, just as you've trusted Kristoff! Now go!"_

Bryon's brow furrowed in confusion at the sudden outburst from the shadow. Still, Cassie looked Bryon in the eyes and took his green-gloved hand. "Let's go!" he shouted, pulling her toward the window.

"No!" Blake shouted from his knees. Blood trickled from beneath his fingers, and Bryon hoped that the man's eyesight wasn't permanently damaged. "Cassie, don't!"

"I-I'm sorry, Blake," Cassie replied, a single teardrop trickling down her cheek. "I'll be back soon. I promise."

Bryon struggled to block out Blake's desperate cries as they made their way down the fire escape.

*

"Lieutenant, it is my sincerest regret to inform you that we missed the Lang girl by what appears to have been mere minutes." A man completely covered in black stood stock-still on the screen, doing his best to maintain his composure.

The Lieutenant stood there, drumming his fingers idly on the edge of the thick, concrete table. "The location doesn't matter, soldier. Find her and take her out, be it at home or elsewhere."

The soldier shifted nervously. "Sir? That appears to be the problem. She was reportedly kidnapped—and, uh, according to her stepfather, the 'villain' who took her matches the file description of the Young Avenger. As of right now, she could be anywhere with him in a city of millions. Without a solid lead, it would be like finding a needle in a stack of needles, and we're slightly inconspicuous here, sir. Perhaps if we'd been able to use the teleporter—"

The Lieutenant slammed his hand against the table, his pale, white fingers flashing red where his hand struck at the impact. "Soldier, are you telling me that you have failed your mission?"

The soldier stared down at the ground. "I…we merely face a temporary, uh, setback, sir."

"Your mission parameters did not include room for error, soldier. Report back to base, and do so in a timely manner. You are not the first team that has failed me today." At that, he flipped a switch on the vid-screen, and the soldier disappeared from view.

Then, alone in the room where no one could see him, the Lieutenant smiled. All of the pieces were falling into place, just as they had all those years ago.

_Father is going to be so proud, _thought Lieutenant Narfi with a sly grin on his face as his fingers resumed their drumming on the tabletop.

_**Avengers Mansion**_

From the outside looking in, Avengers Mansion was a picturesque place, with a serene walkway into the memorial garden in the back and a regal entrance to the hall of champions itself. On the inside—and, more importantly, below the surface—the mansion was a place where the best trained to get better and those same champions were built, broken, and rebuilt even stronger.

It was in this training facility that Walter Newell, the Avenger known as Stingray, was fighting a losing battle against three training robots, each programmed with a high level of martial arts ability. The red-and-white clad hero stood in the middle of the room as the three robots encircled him. He darted to his left, choosing to take the robot that lay on his weak side on his own terms. As the left-hand robot compensated for Stingray's body weight, the frontward and right-hand robots pressed the attack.

Stingray's right foot swept out under the forward robot, catching it off its guard. He reached out and grasped his other attacker with his right hand and, as soon as he fingers had locked, discharged a blast of electricity through his glove. The robot at the left swung its metal arm upward and into Stingray's lower gut, flipping him over its shoulder even as it fell to the ground.

Then, suddenly, the simulation went dead. Stingray had set the program to end when he managed to get all three robots on the ground at the same time. It was a simple exercise, but he also knew it was one that he needed. The final robot's last-second uppercut was painful proof of that.

"Impressive," said a voice off to the side of the training room. The Inhuman called Karnak stood with his arms crossed, his eyebrows raised appraisingly. The Terrigen Mists had granted him the ability to see the weakness in anything. "There seems to be but one flaw with your fighting style, Stingray. You expect your opponents' movements to be delayed, as though you were fighting underwater. You have become used to being able to see movements before they happen. If you wish to enhance your fighting skills, you will need to learn to anticipate your opponent's movements before even then."

"Thanks, Karnak," said Stingray, taking his words with a grain of salt. If it was something he could easily apply, he would attempt to incorporate it into a fight. Still, Walter was a scientist first and foremost, and he couldn't see Karnak's words making much of a difference until the next time someone threatened to end the world, or do something else of that sort. "I'll have to work on that."

"Yes, you likely will," Karnak replied coolly, his eyes following Stingray out the door.

Walter made his way to the control room where he planned to review the tape of his short training session. Then he would run through it again and see what he could change to make it work this time. He pushed open the door to see Steve Rogers and Carol Danvers huddled over a large, conference-style table.

Steve looked back over his shoulder at the sound of the door opening. "Walter? You should see this." He beckoned Walter over to the papers and documents spread out over the table's mahogany expanse.

"What are we looking at here, Steve?" Walter asked, pulling off his face mask and gloves.

"Headlines," Steve replied grimly. "T'Challa called us yesterday, claiming that he believed that the American government had ordered a hit on his 'Legacy,' a teenage Wakandan girl with powers similar to his. We told him we would look into it, but neither Carol nor I had heard of this Legacy Program before."

"Right," said Carol, folding her arms over the front of her body. The blonde heroine's face was set in stone. "We started digging up information over the past few weeks about assaults or attacks on teenagers and young adults, but we didn't find anything solid—until today."

She held up a printout of an online version of a newspaper. The headline read, "LOCAL TEEN CRITICAL AFTER BEACHSIDE DRIVE-BY." The paper featured a dramatic photo of the yellow "do not cross" tape against a background of police officers silhouetted by the sun setting below the gulf waters. "Do you remember Michael Corson?" Carol asked.

Walter thought for a moment. "He won one of those junior science achievement awards. I pulled some strings and landed him an internship at the marine center in Fort Myers so that he could work on his stuff even though he's in high school." Walter paused, as several pieces fit together in his head. "Wait—are you saying—you don't think he's _my_ Legacy, do you?"

Steve held his hands out. "We don't know for sure. In fact, we're still completely in the dark when it comes to that, even with both of our contacts with the government. Carol and I were discussing this, though, and we think that it would be a good idea for one of us to go down there. Whoever did this did it methodically. They meant to execute the boy. Chances are, they're going to try it again."

"So you want me to—what? Go down there and stand guard outside his hospital room?" Walter asked. "You seriously believe that T'Challa wasn't barking up the wrong tree and that these two incidences are related?"

"We can't take the chance that they aren't," Steve replied. "Children's lives could be at stake here, and I don't want that on my head if we assume it's a false alarm."

As Steve finished his last sentence, his communicator on the table chirped loudly. He picked it up. "What's going on?" he asked, his voice instantly serious. "Get down here…I'll assemble the team…We'll brief them when you get here, Scott." He snapped the communicator shut. "That was Scott Lang. His daughter, Cassie, has been kidnapped. I think the chances of these being related just got a lot better."

"I'm taking a Quinjet to Florida. I just have to tell my wife, and then I'll be in the air. Keep me posted," Walter said with a newfound sense of duty. "I want to know where this thing goes. If the water starts getting hotter, I want to be here where I'm needed."

"Will do," said Steve. "Oh, and Walter? You never know. Karnak might really be trying to help instead of just being nosy." The last part came with a hint of a smile.

After Walter left, Carol looked at Steve. "Okay, what's going on? I can tell you're thinking about something."

Steve shrugged. "Do you think you can handle debriefing the team for me? There's someone I need to check up on, especially if this is what I think this is."

"No problem, Steve," Carol replied. "Tell Isaiah I said hi."

_**The Hideout**_

During the last few years of World War II, the hometown heroes of New York began to spend more time together outside of costume, despite many of their reservations about their identities. However, it only made sense that some of the heroes would bond after stopping Nazi threats to the homeland together, and often the heroes took it upon themselves to get together and discuss the war—or, more often than not, just to relieve some stress by hanging out with others who felt the same pressure.

This is how the Hideout was born. The idea came to Marvel Boy after he teamed up with the Secret Stamp and Wonder Boy to defeat a swarm of radioactive locusts. He pulled a few strings and closed off the entrance to a basement room from the surface, relocating the entrance to a secret alleyway alcove. The room had an access door into the greater part of the sewer system, which would allow any of the boy sidekicks to quickly navigate toward a threat in the city.

Unfortunately, the Hiroshima Cleanup ended the use of the Hideout, and it had yet to be opened—until today.

Bryon spread out his files on the card table that he used to play poker at with the other sidekicks as Cassie looked around. The years had not been kind to the room and moisture had caused the wallpaper to peel away from the walls.

"What _is_ this place?" asked Cassie. From the look on her face, it was obvious she was unimpressed.

The shadow flitted about the walls. "_It used to be a hangout for off-duty teen heroes. It looks like it's been forgotten, though, for quite some time_."

"I'd say," Cassie responded. "Now, can you tell me, you know, why I'm here?"

Bryon looked back over his shoulder and stood up quickly. "Sorry. Let me explain." He quickly went over the story of his escape and what he had overheard from the Lieutenant.

Cassie's eyebrows narrowed. "You kidnapped me because you thought that would be the best way of keeping me safe? What about keeping _you_ safe? The Avengers and the N.Y.P.D. are looking for you right now."

"I know, I know," Bryon said, shaking his head. "I wasn't thinking clearly."

Cassie stood there for a moment before responding. "So, if this is all true, then what are we doing next?"

"We?" Bryon asked, surprised.

"_Yes, we,_" the shadow cut in. "_Cassie has some talents that could prove useful to you_."

Bryon looked at the shadow, his face hardened. "Can we talk? We don't seem to be working from the same place here." He cast a sideways glance at Cassie. "Sorry about this." He stepped toward the back of the Hideout. The shadow followed, but its pace was almost defiant.

"What's going on?" Bryon hissed. "You tell me this is my mission—to figure things out for myself. Then you tell me who I'm working with, and you say things to Cassie that you couldn't know unless you already knew something about her. Are we even on the same side?"

"_You're the one who nearly threw it all away with your stunt at the apartment_," spat the shadow. "_My goal is to make this a success. Whether that is by following your lead or by taking my own does not matter. All that matters is that we win."_

"Oh, yeah?" Bryon retorted. "Isn't that what the Axis powers said in World War II? 'Win by any means necessary?'"

"_Yes, but—"_ the shadow began.

"No," Bryon interrupted. "We talk to each other on this. We're in this one together. You're either with me, or you're finding someone else corporeal to do the lifting."

"_Then in that case, I'll tell you who we retrieve next,_" replied the shadow, tired of the back-and-forth. As long as it could make Bryon think it was his idea, he could move forward with the mission. "_Her name is Kate Bishop. I think you'll find her a lot easier to find than the last one…_"

_**The Bradley Residence, Queens**_

Captain America pulled his motorcycle up outside the Bradley home directly up to the doorstep. Faith and Isaiah Bradley's apartment was accessible from the ground level, unlike some of the complexes in the heart of Manhattan. Cap pulled off his helmet and ruffled his blond hair to get rid of his helmet head. He couldn't remember a time before today that he had visited while wearing his uniform. Today was different. Today, Steve was here not as a friend, but as an Avenger.

He pressed the doorbell with a red-gloved hand and stepped back. A quaint-looking black woman opened the door tentatively. Her eyes brightened as she saw who the visitor was, but the look immediately turned to confusion. "Why, I hadn't realized that you were visiting today, Steve," she said carefully. "Should I go get Isaiah?"

Steve held up his hand. "This wasn't a planned thing, Faith. I'd have called ahead, but my mind was going off in too many directions at once. I apologize. Is now a bad time? I'll only take a few minutes of your time."

Faith stepped aside and let Steve into the humble apartment. He walked down the hall and into the living room, where Isaiah Bradley sat peacefully in an armchair. A chessboard sat on the table beside him with a game already in progress. Isaiah had been a member of a platoon of black soldiers that were given the Super-Soldier Serum during a trial run. Only he had survived.

What the scientists discovered was that Isaiah had not only survived the experiment, but he had also gained extraordinary strength, stamina, and agility. He donned a red, white, and blue outfit and became one of the many Captains America in history. Steve and Isaiah often spent time together, although the conversation was somewhat limited due to an accident that had left Isaiah's voice crippled.

Steve stepped into the room and sat down in the armchair next to Isaiah's, turning to face the silent man. "Is today a good day or a bad day?" Steve asked, indicating Isaiah's throat. Isaiah returned the question with a thumbs-down gesture.

Accepting that answer, Steve proceeded forward. "Look, Isaiah. Something's come up, and I'm somewhat worried for your family. Someone is targeting people who might carry on an Avenger's name he died and I wanted to know if you knew how to get a hold of Josiah. I want to let him know he could be in danger."

Isaiah shook his head. He did not know where Josiah was.

A voice came in from the side room. "Hey, Grandpa, I'm heading—holy crap, that's Captain America!" Eli Bradley stopped in mid-stride as he caught sight of the star-spangled Avenger.

Faith heard the commotion and stepped in, drying her hands with a washrag. "Captain, this is our grandson Eli. He's been staying with us for a few weeks now, but it's been awhile since you've stopped in."

"P-pleased to meet you, sir," Eli stammered.

The wheels in Steve's mind were turning at hyper-speed. "Eli, this may seem odd to you, but do you happen to have any…superpowers?"

Eli opened his mouth and began to respond, but Steve's eyes were no longer focused on the boy. His ears went deaf to all the inside noise because he could see something else unfolding out the window on the front door, just down the main hallway. He could see a delivery truck's wheels and several heavily-armored, black-suited males lumbering out of it. The reflection from the mirror in the hallway held the upper body of a field commander. His lips said two words. _Target acquired_.

"EVERYONE—GET DOWN!" Steve shouted. He grabbed Faith and pushed her onto Isaiah's lap, using his other arm to whip the shield off his back and in front of the Bradleys. An odd word was shouted from outside, and then the room dissolved in a chorus of bullets and shrapnel.

The dust had barely cleared by the time Isaiah Bradley shouted the loudest he had since the accident. "Eli…!"

The teenage boy's clothing was in tatters where the bullets had ripped through the fabric and halted. The bulletproof boy rose to his knees and coughed. "That answer your--*kaff!*--question, Cap?"

Steve's mind was elsewhere again as he heard the squeal of tires from the trucks outside. "What did you hear them say before they shot?" he asked quickly. But it made no difference. Steve had heard the word as clear as day. "They shouted 'Allah!' They're trying to pass themselves off as terrorists."

He looked from Faith to Isaiah to Eli. "Get to Avengers Mansion as quickly as you can. Tell them I sent you. They'll take care of you."

"Wait—Cap! Where are you going?" asked Eli as Steve began running for the door.

Steve looked back as he stood his motorcycle back up from where it had fallen. "After them. You do _not_ do something like this with me around and get away with this." Then, he mounted the bike, gunned the engine, and rocketed off into the midday sun after the murderous delivery vans.

_**The Kaplan Residence, Brooklyn**_

Billy Kaplan woke up half-on and half-off his bed at one in the afternoon Saturday morning. He halfheartedly pushed his upper body back onto the mattress as he squinted into the red light of his digital alarm clock. He rolled onto his back and groaned before throwing off the covers and swinging his feet onto the floor.

Making his way toward the kitchen, Billy stopped and stared at the note on the refrigerator door, his hand paused in the middle of running through his black hair. "Billy, took the boys to Jimmy Carroll's birthday party. Leftover lasagna in the fridge. Your father will be home around five. Love, Mom."

Billy shrugged and pulled a milk carton out of the fridge. Since no one was home, he forwent the use of a glass and began to drink straight from the carton. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. The wiry sixteen-year-old wore only a pair of flannel pajama pants. He frowned as he pulled the carton away from his mouth and wiped away a milk mustache.

Suddenly, the mirror and the wall behind it exploded outward, and Billy put out his hands as if they might protect him from the blast that was coming at him.

"That's him!" shouted one of the men in black as he leveled a rifle at Billy, who was huddled on the floor in the wreckage of the apartment wall. "Awaiting orders, Captain?"

"You have your orders," said another man. His nametag marked him as Abrams. "End it."

Billy stared up at the gunman fearfully. "I don't want to die," he whispered weakly. Then, without warning, his eyes glowed a bright blue. "_Idon'twannadie… Idon'twannadie… Idon'twannadie…"_

The apartment exploded in a brilliant turquoise supernova.

_**Next Issue: **__Cap attempts to track down Lieutenant Narfi's agents, and Stingray has a surprise waiting for him in Florida! Plus, what happens when the Avengers track down the boy who stole Ant-Man's daughter? _


	5. Chapter 3

**Young Avengers #3: Mile Markers (**_**Legacy Lost **_**Part 3)**

**By Hunter Lambright**

Billy Kaplan was not having a good day.

He had woken up to an empty apartment with half the day gone, only to be ambushed by gunmen who seemed intent on killing him. He had whispered that he didn't want to die, and suddenly been overtaken by a chant. The world went turquoise, then black, and when he woke up, it was red and blue. Two paramedics looked down at him with worried stares.

The teen was lying on the floor of what used to be the kitchen, his pajama bottoms frayed from shrapnel. A shard of mirror several inches long still jutted from his abdomen, from when the wall had exploded inward at the gunmen's entrance. His torso was pockmarked with similar wounds. Billy wasn't sure he wanted to get better. Something had happened. He knew that. Something had changed his life, and he knew it wasn't going to be the same ever again.

A soft voice said, "Remove the glass." It came out as less of an order and more of a knowledgeable suggestion. Billy's eyes rolled around for the source of the voice to see a tan, dark-haired woman dressed in varying shades of red.

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come out. She put a hand to her lips, and spoke again. "Do not worry, Billy Kaplan. I am Espirita. Soon, you will feel no more pain. Soon, it will get better."

And somehow, deep down, Billy knew he believed her.

_**Queens**_

Steve Rogers whipped in and out of traffic on his motorcycle, intent on finding the white moving van that had nearly gunned down one of his friends and the man's family. He wore the stylized red, white, and blue uniform of Captain America, his shield strapped firmly to his back. Steve was convinced that the people he was tracking had something to do with at least one murder and several other attempts in the past few days, but what disturbed him most was the fact that they had posed as terrorists to hide the true reason behind their actions.

He was angry that they had gotten this far already, and he was even more angry that he hadn't been able to do anything to stop it. If Eli Bradley hadn't been bulletproof, he would have been killed by the barrage of bullets the soldiers had put into the house. What puzzled Steve the most was why they hadn't brought armor-piercing rounds if they had known that Eli was a Legacy, and that he had powers. It was all a confusing mess, and Steve was almost certain he wouldn't comprehend it until he was able to see the full picture.

All of this raced through Steve's mind as he continued dodging in and out of the slow-moving lanes of traffic the led into the heart of the city. He knew he would find the soldiers here somewhere unless their path had changed. It made the most sense, though, that they would try to get away in the catacombs of the inner city.

Somewhere up ahead, he heard screeching brakes and the obnoxious buzzing of disgruntled drivers laying on their horns. Steve gunned the engine, whipping around a semitrailer and hugging the midline between the two lanes. He poured on the speed, able to see the cars that were moving erratically in front of him to make way for the delivery truck's unannounced movements. That delivery truck held the soldiers who had masqueraded as religious dissidents in their attempt to execute the Bradley family. Steve zeroed in on its bumper. That was his target.

The trick, Steve knew, was to catch the delivery van without making as much of a mess of the roadway as it was, even while he was traveling through the mess the van was creating. It was a tricky situation, but Steve had plenty of practice with his motorcycle and wielded the machine with an almost unrivaled expertise. He tucked down against the handlebars, taking away the wind resistance. The bike shot forward like a weight had been dropped from its back.

Steve sidled up next to the delivery van, sliding his shield from his back to his arm at the same time to avoid the gunfire he was expecting. There was none. Steve reached with his right arm up to the driver's side door and yanked it open, just in time to see the driver disappear in a flash of purple.

The effect was immediate. The driverless delivery van began to careen out of control without a pair of sturdy hands on the wheel. Steve killed the engine on his motorcycle and kicked off it, swinging into the cabin of the van. He grabbed the wheel and overcorrected, sending the van from the right edge of the rode over to the left. The cars had stopped trying to deal with the moving van by now, thankfully, as Steve yanked the wheel again, sending it back to the right. This wasn't going to work, he realized. He was going to wreck, one way or another.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Steve caught sight of something so absurd he wondered if he was imagining it. There, coming up from behind the van kicking off the road with the sound of miniature thunderclaps, was Eli Bradley on a skateboard. His clothes were still torn from the bullets that had ripped them apart. The teenager quickly passed the van as Steve's booted foot slammed the brakes.

The skateboard was kicked away as Eli planted his feet, holding his arms out in the face of the oncoming tons of screaming metal and rubber. Steve realized what the kid was about to try, and put his shield out in front of him in preparation. The van slammed into Eli and skidded to a halt, even as Steve's velocity shoved him out a shield-sized hole in the front windshield. In spite of himself, Steve couldn't help but land on his feet with the acrobatic prowess of a cat.

"Good work, son," Steve said as the smoke cleared. There stood Eli, his arms sunk into the engine up to the elbow. His tennis shoes had worn through to the soles of his feet from skidding down the road. Steve helped Eli pry his arms from the mass of twisted metal inside. "Let's get to a safe distance in case the van blows."

"I'm with you," Eli said. They ran further down the roadway, pausing only for Eli to snag his mangled skateboard from the pavement.

When they were finally far enough away from the stopped van, Steve leaned back against the median. "So, super-strength?" Steve asked, allowing himself a deep breath for the first time since he'd been talking to Isaiah.

"No," Eli said, shaking his head while grinning nonetheless. "Well, some, if you know what I mean, but not the Hulk. Mostly it's invulnerability, you know? I think friction was more what stopped it than my arms." He patted the exposed soles of his feet as proof.

"How'd you catch up so quickly?" Steve asked, pointing at the skateboard. The wood and metal had seen better days, and three of the four wheels looked as if they were about to fall off.

"You were driving in New York traffic," Eli said. "Super-stamina, I guess. I hadn't tried it before because I figured that _this_ would happen to my skateboard."

Steve finally lowered the bombshell. "Why did you come after me, Eli, when I told you to get your grandparents to Avengers Mansion?" Eli still wore that boyish grin, and it suddenly became painfully clear what was going on. Eli was in shock. Getting shot at for the first time had a good chance of doing that to a guy. When Eli didn't answer, that confirmed it for Steve. He wanted to get the boy to Avengers Mansion as soon as possible.

"Let's go back and get my bike," Cap said, indicating the fallen motorcycle in the middle of the traffic jam that was already being redirected by New York's Finest, responding with a quickness that was almost unheard of. He offered Eli an apologetic look. "Sorry, but I have a call to make."

Pulling out his communicator, Steve put a call into Carol back at the mansion. "Carol? Things may be worse than we suspected. Yeah, I'm on my way. Brief whoever's there. We're going to have to move on this one before someone gets killed."

*

_**Avengers Mansion**_

"Will do, Steve. I'll keep you posted," Carol said, then shut her communicator. She turned to the assembled Avengers in the conference room, trying to stand as confidently as she could before her fellow heroes. "That was Captain America. He was just attacked at the residence of another possible Legacy, although he's almost certain that the Legacy was the target and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The problem is, we might not be there next time. We keep getting lucky, and we can't count on that to last."

Karnak's face remained as stoic as ever. The Inhuman's extended cranium was mutated so that analyzing every bit of information in a situation was child's play. He stood with his arms folded, waiting for Carol to continue.

Quicksilver, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. His eyes darted all over the room from underneath his pointed silver hair. Pietro Maximoff was a victim of the inherent attention deficit disorder that came with being able to move hundreds of times faster than the rest of the world. Carol couldn't help but notice that his eyes most often fell on Karnak. The two had history, and Carol hoped that they would continue to set it aside for the good of the team and its mission.

Karnak and Quicksilver were joined by Nicole Ridely, the young, hot-tempered woman who had taken on the name Binary after Carol herself had given it up. She harnessed extraordinary amounts of power with limits that Carol didn't think they had even begun to reach in their exploration of her abilities. She was an asset, even if they didn't get along—at all.

The last man in the room was no member of the team. Scott Lang stood with one hand on his hip and the other holding his large, silver Ant-Man helmet. His face was molded into a mask of absolute determination. Carol knew why. His daughter had been kidnapped, and he would do anything to get her back.

Carol started in on the briefing. "If you haven't figured it out by now, we have a situation on our hands. Not a the-world-is-gonna-blow-up situation, but just as serious. From what we've managed to piece together, someone went and pieced together a file featuring children that would have similar powers to take our places in the event of our deaths. Every Avenger supposedly has a Legacy, and someone is targeting them to prevent the emergence of a new generation of Avengers."

She passed out copies of the newspaper headlines that she and Steve had been going through before he'd gone to talk to Isaiah Bradley. "We think they started by taking out T'Challa's Legacy in Wakanda. She was shot to death and left to die in the desert. They couldn't figure out where the soldiers who did it came from. Then Cassie Lang was kidnapped by a masked man, possibly a super-villain. Then we have two more shooting victims, both of whom managed to escape with their lives. Michael Corson was attacked in Florida, and Billy Kaplan was hit here in New York, both by gunmen again. And, to top it off, Cap just met with more gunmen attacking Eli Bradley."

"Something doesn't fit," said Quicksilver, cutting in. "You say Scott's daughter was kidnapped? Where were the guns? She's the outlier. We either start with finding her or eliminate it as a completely coincidental occurrence."

Karnak shook his head softly. "There is a second possibility. We might be looking at two different groups with the same goal or at the very least a similar goal. This could be a weakness to exploit in the future."

"We're looking at all the possibilities," Carol said ambiguously. The last thing she wanted to do was be seen picking one side or the other in their disagreement. "The thing is, we don't have the files on these kids. We can either follow up on previous hits, or we can try to head them off, predict their next move."

"How do we do that?" Ant-Man asked angrily. "We need to be looking for the ones who are already gone, not making guesses at which kid in America has Wonder Man's powers!"

"I know you're worried about Cassie, Scott, but we have a better lead at finding the people who took Cassie by going to a place they're likely to be than chasing ghost trails. Besides, taking guesses on the Legacies might not be as hard as you think in some cases."

Carol pulled a copy of an archery magazine from the stack of papers on the conference table. On the front cover was an athletic teenage girl. Her black hair was tied back into a ponytail to keep it out of the way of her bow and arrows, which were stored in a quiver slung over her shoulder. The headline read, "Is This the Next Hawkeye?"

"This is Kate Bishop," said Carol. "Her father is rich, her mother is deceased, and she lives in Chicago."

"Then how—" Scott began.

Carol held up a hand. "But—there's an archery competition in New York this weekend, and I checked it out already. Kate Bishop is going to be there. They timed this, somehow. I don't know if it was an accident or if it was engineered this way, but she's here just like Cassie, Billy, and Eli were. If we're going to find these guys, we're going to find them there, attacking 'The Next Hawkeye.'"

Scott put his helmet over his head. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go, already." It was odd to see the normally rational man so rash.

"Wait," said Binary. "We're a few members short. Where are Espirita and Stingray?"

"Espirita was the first to respond, so I sent her out as soon as we got the call about the attack on the Kaplan boy. She's with him right now in case there's a follow up," Carol answered, leading the way toward the door. "Stingray took a Quinjet to Florida. He knew of the boy before he was shot. The speed he was flying, I'd guess he'll be arriving there any minute now, hopefully before Michael meets more of the same people who shot him down on the beach…"

*

"Excuse me, sir? I'm afraid you can't access this point without a pass—sir!" shouted a doctor, chasing the man in the black armor.

The man turned around to face the doctor, pointing the semi-automatic gun at the doctor's face, which paled considerably in the face of the weaponry. "This a good enough pass for you, sir?"

The doctor said nothing, turning tail and running. U.S. Abrams would have shot the man in other circumstances, but he couldn't risk sending the entire hospital into a frenzy over the sound of the bullet. It was bad enough that he had to walk through the hospital like this and that the doctor he'd just encountered had more than likely called for security the second he was out of Abrams' sight. He didn't want to risk causing too much chaos on the other floors before he was ready to use it to escape, which was why letting the doctor go had been a necessary evil.

Michael Corson's room was on the sixth floor of the hospital. Abrams poked his head into room 624, where he spotted the wiry teenager snoring away, likely doped up on three different kinds of painkillers. He was amazed that the boy had survived the rounds he'd shot into him himself on the beach, but he also knew that, as the one who failed to kill him the first time, it was his duty to complete the job. He leveled the gun at Michael's prone form.

Just as his finger prepared to pull the trigger, Abrams' body was sent into electrified spasms. The gun went flying across the floor and his arms locked up against his will, waving uncontrollably. Then, with the smell of burning meat, he collapsed unconscious to the ground. Behind him stood Stingray in his red and white costume, his electrified glove still crackling with energy.

Stingray gasped as, in a flash of purple light, the body disappeared, teleported away for its failure. "They're like government ninjas," Stingray muttered angrily. "How'd they get them out of the IRS?"

He froze as Michael stirred in his bed, his rest disturbed by the noise, the light, or both. Stingray froze, expecting the boy to be confused and call for help. That wasn't the case. In a barely discernible voice, Michael whimpered like a kicked puppy, tucking at the sheet while trying unsuccessfully to sit up.

"Why can't I feel my legs?" he asked weakly, and for the first time Stingray noticed the shining silver wheelchair slid up against the hospital bed. He looked at the boy helplessly, and for once could think of nothing to say.

*

"So, what's this Bishop girl's deal?" asked the Young Avenger, looking down at the shadow on the ground. It kept pace with his steps, and Bryon was hopeful that no one would notice that he was the only person in existence walking around with two shadows.

"_Deal?_" returned the shadow. "_Are you inquiring as to the nature of her abilities?_"

Bryon rolled his eyes. "Excuse me. What are her powers?" He stopped walking, and the shadow flitted backward to maintain the illusion. "On second thought, Cassie, what are _your_ powers?"

Cassie shook her head. "What powers?"

"You have to have powers," Bryon said. "There's no reason you would be in the file if you didn't."

"_Go ahead, tell him. I already know, and I won't hesitate to fill him in myself,_" the shadow said, and Bryon had a feeling that it wasn't bluffing.

With the look of a child who had been caught stealing out of the cookie jar, Cassie said, "Ever since the last time I was kidnapped, I started stealing Pym particles from my dad. He never noticed because I took just a little at a time, but after awhile I figured out how I could use them to change size."

"So are you a Giant Girl or are you a Shrinking Girl?" Bryon asked.

"Kinda both," Cassie said, shrugging. Bryon got the feeling that the change was something she wasn't quite comfortable with her newfound powers. It looked like she had fallen victim to the old curse of "be careful what you wish for."

"How far are we from the archery competition?" Bryon asked, directing this question toward the shadow.

"_It's very close,_" the shadow replied. "_But, Br—_"

Bryon was knocked to the ground as an arm dead-legged him in the back of the knees. The attacker was gone before Bryon registered that he was no longer standing, and was back, delivering a punch in the side of the head before Bryon even thought about reacting. Two more blows in this fashion sent Bryon face-first into the pavement, and Quicksilver finally felt that he had accomplished enough to come to a screeching halt in front of them.

"The kidnapper is in my custody," Quicksilver said in his stilted, unnaturally rapid way of speaking. "And you were worried he would be a threat," he scoffed.

"Kidnapper?" Bryon asked, wiping blood from his nose as he tried to rise to a more dignified position. "I can expl—"

"Right, not guilty," Quicksilver said, rolling his eyes. "Cassie, your father has been worried about you. Has this young man hurt you?"

"No, he was just trying to save me!" Cassie protested.

"Ah, Stockholm Syndrome, and in such a short time period, too," Quicksilver noted. "Don't worry. We can deal with that as soon as your father gets here. I'd like to know what the motive was this time. Surely it wasn't another of Doom's ideas." In the blink of an eye, Quicksilver was back on Bryon, stepping on the Young Avenger's back to stop him from getting to his feet. "Oh, no you don't. You're staying right there for now."

"Stop hurting him!" Cassie shouted, suddenly filling much more space than she had before. She grew to tower over Quicksilver by at least eight feet. "He didn't do anything wrong!"

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Quicksilver muttered, darting out of the way of Cassie's swiping hand.

Cassie was knocked backward against a parked car as her feet gave out from underneath her. Karnak stood up and dusted his hands off from striking Cassie in the Achilles tendon. He had found the weak point.

In the midst of this, Bryon finally managed to find his way to his feet. He threw a wild punch and Karnak but missed as Karnak caught sight of the blow hurtling toward him in the car's side-view mirror. Bryon looked up as the sky brightened artificially. Binary was descending on the scene. Bryon could barely hear her as she said, "I can end this, Carol. Just give the word."

"_Enough!_"

The sky darkened even under the light that radiated from around Binary as the shadow expanded over the area, causing his presence to be undeniably noticeable. The fighting ceased on the ground. All eyes were on the shadow that hovered over them.

"_We are all here on the same mission!_" shouted the shadow. "_There are others in danger, yet we insist on having a misunderstanding. Acknowledge that the truth of the matter is that we all want to ensure there is no more bloodshed, despite the difference in our methods. We are wasting time. Kate Bishop is in danger._"

"Avengers, stand down!" shouted Carol, descending on the scene in her Warbird attire. The shadow slowly began to withdraw from the area to its normal size.

"We're going to work with these people?" Scott Lang shouted, resuming his normal size as well. "They kidnapped my daughter!"

"Dad, they didn't mean to kidnap me—ugh, that didn't make sense, but it's true!" Cassie shouted, climbing off the hood of the car.

"Cass!" he shouted, running over and wrapping his daughter in an iron embrace. "Are you okay? What happened to your clothes?" His eyes went wide. "You didn't…? You can change size?"

"It's a long story," Cassie replied. "One that we don't have time for."

"Let's get moving," Bryon said. "I'm the Young Avenger. You won't recognize me, but I can explain that—_after _we do what we came here to do. You have to trust me on this."

"We're coming, too," Carol said. "That's a given."

"Just don't slow us down," Bryon shot back. Quicksilver didn't bother trying to restrain his laugh.

"Doesn't matter," said Binary. She floated several stories up still, her eyes focused a few blocks in the distance, where red and blue lights flashed against the buildings and cars. "If that's where I think it is, we may be too late after all."

"Pietro," Carol said. He nodded, and then he was gone, running off to see what the commotion was, and if it was anything they could help with. They began running after him, and he met them with bad news.

"She's been kidnapped. The building was stormed by a squad of men carrying artillery, but they never fired off a shot. The eyewitnesses claim that they were here for Bishop and Bishop alone." He shook his head. "She disappeared in a flash of light with the gunmen. Whoever was after her beat us to the chase." He said this with the most venom. Being beaten in anything disgusted Pietro.

"Then until we find anything more out, it looks like we have time for a chat," Carol said, eyeing Bryon. "Avengers, let's regroup at the mansion. I have a feeling we're going to be getting a few more pieces to the puzzle."

*

"…and that's why the Superhuman Deployment Division is targeting these teenagers. It is my firm belief that the only reason they are being eliminated is because a copy of the file with their names is outside their possession," Bryon explained to the assembled Avengers, whose ranks now held Captain America and Espirita among them. With them had come two more teenage boys that Bryon recognized as Billy Kaplan and Eli Bradley from the files.

"So if we had this file, we might be able to reach these kids before this agency does," Carol said. "That's if the S.D.D. officially exists at all. I doubt they could get something like this authorized no matter how high the threat to national security was thought to be."

"Where is the file, Bryon?" asked Steve. Of all of the assembled heroes, only he stood. "If we could have it, we could be one step ahead of these people."

"What about their teleporter?" asked Pietro. "We don't know how quickly they could dispatch their people if they see a mass movement toward recruiting these kids."

"Excuse me if I interrupt," said a man who had not been present just a moment before. Every chair in the room scooted outward as everyone stood up to meet the newcomer. He manifested on the top of the conference table. Though his eyes appeared much older, his body was that of a man in his early twenties. His hair was slightly long and he wore dark, nondescript clothing. "Don't react too badly," said the man, smiling. "I'm just a hologram, anyway."

Karnak tested the theory, swiping a hand through the man's lower leg. "It's true. He is not here in body, only in our eyes."

"Glad we got that over with," said the man. He was much too happy to be infiltrating Avengers Mansion like this, and to be delivering the news he was delivering. "Now that we're all on the same page, you probably want me to tell you my name. They call me the Lieutenant, which should be good enough for your secret files."

His demeanor darkened. "Right. Well, it looks like we've got ourselves a conflict of interest, Avengers. You want to save all the so-called 'Young Avengers,' and I think it would be a good idea to kill them all. It stops things from getting messier later. So let's make a deal, shall we? You guys stop recruiting all of these super-powered kids, and I stop killing all of these super-powered kids. But wait! Act now, and I'll sweeten the deal by—"

There was a shuffling sound as someone from outside the projection was shoved into it. The Lieutenant grabbed her by her long, black hair. Her face was scrunched in pain, but everyone present recognized her. "—by not killing Kate Bishop. Whaddaya say? Deal—or no deal?

There was a popping noise as the apparition disappeared, leaving the Avengers and their company alone in the conference room once more.

"Cap, what do we do?" Carol asked, breaking the silence that had blanketed the room.

Cap breathed out slowly, putting his hands down on the table. "We need to discuss this. As adults." He nodded first to Bryon and the other teenagers, then to the door. "Can you kids wait outside for a few minutes? We need to figure out what needs to happen here."

The kids slowly stood up and moved tentatively to the door. Bryon was the last one. When he reached the door, he turned around. "Captain America, I just wanted to say that you've been my idol for my entire life, and that you are a good part of why I put on this costume to protect the home front while you were overseas. I know you'll make the right decision."

Cap absorbed this for a moment. "If I'm only part of the reason you're a hero, son, what was the other part, if you don't mind me asking?"

Bryon shrugged. "What American boy _doesn't_ want to be Bucky?" Then he turned around and followed the others out. He could feel Cap's eyes on his back even after the door swung shut.

When Bryon was in the hall, he saw Eli, Billy, and Cassie standing there waiting for him. They introduced themselves formally, and then Bryon allowed himself to collapse against the wall. The shadow was nowhere to be seen. Bryon suspected it was in the conference room still, eavesdropping on the conversation that was going on. Would the Avengers decide that Kate's life was worth the lives of almost forty more individuals?

"So, what are we going to do now?" asked Billy. His face and arms were pockmarked with scabs and cuts, and Bryon made out what he thought was a gauze pad taped against the boy's stomach.

Eli raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, what are we going to do? I guess we just wait until Captain America tells us what the Avengers have decided."

"And what do we do if they decide that letting this Lieutenant guy kill Kate is worth it to save the other kids?" Cassie shot back. Bryon had a feeling that the sight of the other girl in trouble had roused more of a fire in Cassie's belly than any of the rest of them.

"Cassie's right," Billy said. "We have to do something. I can't just sit here and not do anything, not after finding out I have the power to help."

"And what power is that?" Eli asked.

"I cast spells," Billy replied, although embarrassment immediately registered on his face. "Well, kinda."

"So we have an invincible black guy, the growing ant-girl, a 1940s superhero, and a guy who casts spells—kinda," Eli said. "You really think we're ready for a guy who is ready to shoot holes in us?"

"Yes, we are," Bryon said, speaking for the first time since he left the conference room. "Don't you see? This is exactly what the Lieutenant has been shooting at you for. He's afraid of you doing exactly what Billy and Cassie want to do. Are you in, or are you out?"

"I'm in," Cassie said, walking over to Bryon. Billy stepped over immediately afterward. Bryon looked up at Eli questioningly.

Eli sighed. "I'll come, but this is for Kate, okay?"

"Good," Bryon said. "Billy, do you think you could fly us out of here? Or teleport? I know you're new at this, but we need to get out of here."

"I can try," Billy said. He closed his eyes tight and began to mumble underneath his breath. "I want to be out of here…_ Iwannabeouttahere… Iwannabeouttahere…_" he began to chant slowly, and turquoise light began to fill the room.

"Oh, no!" Cassie whispered to Bryon, looking up at him. "Should we leave a note telling them you didn't kidnap us?"

"Let them think what they want," Bryon said with a sly grin. "For all we know, that's what it's going to take to get them to follow us. Besides, where's the fun if none of the adults get angry?"

As Bryon finished speaking, Billy went silent. The light blue light expanded, filling the room to the point that it made the kids blind. Then it disappeared, and the room was suddenly very cold and empty.

The door to the conference room slammed open. Carol poked her head out. "Are they—?"

Steve nodded. "They're gone."

Carol began to massage her temples. "This is why I don't have a sidekick, Steve," she said. "Here's hoping we don't have to save them again."

Steve shook his head. "Here's hoping we find them in time _to_ save them."

_**To Be Continued**_

_**Next Issue: **_The newly-christened Young Avengers are prepared to take the fight to the Lieutenant! But just who _is_ Lieutenant Narfi, and what is his connection to the past, going all the way back to the beginning of the Avengers? Will the kids save Kate, or will their actions cost the archer her life? Check it out in part four of "Legacy Lost!"


	6. Chapter 4

**Young Avengers #4: Surging the Opponent (**_**Legacy Lost **_**Part 4)**

**By Hunter Lambright**

_**Somewhere above New York**_

Four teenagers huddled together as they flew across the night sky in a shimmering, blue, lima-bean shaped vehicle. The magical manifestation only remained afloat because Billy Kaplan willed it to stay in the sky with his newfound abilities. He was a quick learner, and part of him wondered what his limit was if this was what he could do after just half a day with powers.

Since he had woken up that morning, life had changed for Billy Kaplan. No longer was he worried about algebra finals, money troubles, and if he'd cleared the history on the computer. His mind had been expanded to more dangerous and desperate situations in the world, like whether his actions would save or condemn Kate Bishop, among other extremely important items.

"We need costumes," Billy said. His arms were stretched across the sides of the vehicle, and so his back was to the rest of the group.

Eli Bradley looked up. "What did you say?"

"I said, we need costumes," Billy repeated.

Eli shook his head. "That's what I thought you said, and I was giving you the opportunity to save yourself. Why the heck do we need costumes?"

Bryon cocked an eyebrow. The green-clad teen lifted the corner of his cape in Eli's direction. "I have a costume. The Avengers all wear costumes. What's wrong with costumes?"

"I am _not_ gonna be laughed out of school because everyone saw me wearing spandex," Eli said. He crossed his arms over his chest and pressed his lips together defiantly.

"I like the idea of wearing a costume," Cassie chimed in. The blonde girl was the youngest member of the group, barely clocking in at fourteen years old.

"You're outvoted," Bryon said, looking at Eli. He turned to Billy. "If you're able…?"

Billy nodded and began muttering under his breath. Golden dust sprinkled down over the group. Bryon's costume was not altered in design, although the color brightened somewhat from the drab, dark green that must have only been cool in the war times. Cassie's clothes shimmered in the dust before changing into a one-piece red and black spandex suit reminiscent of her father's Ant-Man uniform. Where the dust landed was a black domino mask. She picked it up and fit it perfectly over her eyes. Billy's clothes shimmered into a thick, black and blue leathery outfit that seemed like it drew equally from Norse legend and modern fashion. A ragged, red cape and a circular stone crown decorated with runes completed the costume. Eli was the last to be changed. Billy chalked it up to him being the one least receptive to the change in the first place. Eli's clothing was replaced with a blue outfit with military star buttons and red gloves.

Eli stared at himself, looking himself over. "I told you, I am not going to do this if there's a chance everyone I know will see me on TV and laugh me out of school, man!" He began to take the gloves off.

Billy looked at Bryon. "Face mask?"

Bryon nodded. "Face mask."

A few short words later, Eli's head and neck were covered with a mask the same color of the rest of his outfit. "See? Now no one can even tell you're black, let alone that you're Eli Bradley," Billy said, pressing the flying craft onward. "Are we getting anywhere near close, Bryon? If we are, I need to know so we can drop into the woods and, you know, not be seen."

"I don't know," Bryon admitted, looking around. "I can't find the shadow."

"_I'm right here,_" said the hissing voice of the shadow. No one knew who it was or where it had come from. All Bryon knew was that the shadow had been the one to grant him his powers and give him his missions. They had trusted each other, though some of the shadow's recent actions had shaken that trust. "_We're about twenty miles off. In fifteen we'll need to drop below the tree level, and three more after that we'll have to walk._"

Billy absorbed this information and continued to concentrate on the flight. Bryon turned to the shadow. "Where have you been?"

"_Taking care of business,_" the shadow said. "_You aren't my only iron in the fire. You just happen to be the most important one at the moment._"

"Yeah? Well we need to be a little more focused. If we don't do this right, we could be endangering several dozen more kids. Tell me _those_ irons aren't a little important right now. I dare you," Bryon said with more than a little venom in his voice.

"_I'm doing everything I can. You focus on your part. We'll talk about this later, if we're still alive to do so,_" the shadow said evenly.

Bryon fumed because he hadn't been able to provoke actual anger, but he let it go if only to make less of a fool of himself in front of Cassie and Eli, who he was certain had witnessed the entire exchange. "Fine. But we _will_ talk later."

"So, uh, anybody corporeal need a hug?" Billy asked, trying to break the almost palpable tension. "Because I'm a little busy, but I'm sure Eli's in the mood." No one reacted. "Riiiiight. I'll just keep flying then."

_**Stingray's Quinjet, en route to New York**_

It hadn't been easy to convince the hospital to let Michael come with Stingray. It had taken an explanation that he was on a superhuman hit list coupled with some of the assassin's ejected bullet casings before Stingray had the hospital convinced both Michael and the hospital itself were better off if he could take the boy back to New York.

As soon as he wheeled the boy into the Quinjet, they took off for Avengers Mansion. Stingray knew that if anything was about to go down, it would happen there. After about half an hour of awkward silence, Stingray decided to ask something that had been bugging him since they had found out Michael was one of the targets. "So, what did you do, do you think, to get attacked like that, Michael?"

Michael shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, hard to believe, but this is my second time being attacked like that. First time was when I was on the beach, fighting off those Plodex things with my rapier, and then later at my house when—well, it's a long story, but they came and got the Plodex that went home with me."

Stingray absorbed this, made a mental note to ask for the full story later, and then said, "What did you say you were fighting them off with?"

"My rapier," Michael said. "You know, the type of sword, I guess you'd call it, that you use for fencing."

"Swordsman," Stingray muttered. "You aren't my Legacy, you're the Swordsman's."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Michael said, his brow furrowed in confusion.

Stingray set the Quinjet on autopilot and then turned to look at Michael. "I'm talking about the files. According to the Black Panther, every Avenger has a Legacy file, in case someone kills all the Avengers one day, or goes crazy and 'disassembles' us. We'd always assumed that, because my interests in aquatic science mirror your interests, you were my Legacy, but that's now how it works, I don't think. It's based on the powers, the motif, I believe. So my Legacy is someone who wears an aquatic suit or has electrical abilities, just like Ant-Man's Legacy is apparently his size-changing daughter, and so on."

Michael leaned forward in the wheelchair. "But…what does this all _mean_, exactly?"

"I'm not sure," Stingray said. "It's all one confusing mess. It's like, why are these people trying to kill certain individuals repeatedly while running at the first sign of an Avenger regarding other individuals? And if these people want superhuman teenagers dead, why are they only using bullets? Lead may be effective, but when they get down the list to the Legacies for the Hulk or Wonder Man…do you see what I mean? The logic is flawed. There's another game being played here, and I'm not sure I understand the rules yet."

"How long do we have until we touch down in New York?" Michael asked.

Stingray checked the aircraft's computer. "Our ETA is still a couple of hours away. Why?"

"See if you can upload the files that the Avengers have put together. I want us to take a look at them. And you can take off your mask, Mr. Newell. I couldn't remember where I'd heard your voice until you mentioned us having similar interests in aquatic science," Michael explained. "S'okay, though. Secret's safe with me. Let's just do what we can to help out from afar. I don't want anyone else to lose from this like I have if we can help it…"

_**Avengers Mansion**_

"They must have had trouble finding it," Captain America said, pacing back and forth in the conference room. The star-spangled Avenger wore a frown that was set deep into his face. "That has to be what's taking them so long."

Carol Danvers, the Avenger known as Warbird, shook her head, displacing her blonde hair in the process. "I think the shadow gave us good information, Steve. Quicksilver has hardly been gone ten minutes. I think you might be taking his speed for granted."

Steve grunted. "As long as he comes back with our ace in the hole, that's what matters."

"Something's bugging you, Steve. I can tell," Carol said, walking up behind him and putting a hand on his shoulder. "What is it?"

Steve shook his head. "It's what that boy, the Young Avenger, what he said about Bucky. He struck a nerve there, and you could tell he meant to. I don't want anything to happen to these kids any more than I wanted anything to happen to Bucky. Bryon has to know that, but he went for the low blow anyway. It just has me shaken is all."

Carol looked Steve in the eyes with a sad look on her face. "He's a kid, Steve. He wanted to do his own thing no matter what you said, and when it looked like you were going to stand in the way of that, he lashed out. That's what kids do. You've looked madmen like the Red Skull in the eye plenty of times. You can't let something like this get in the way."

"That's not all, Carol," Steve replied, and she saw that his frown had deepened. "It's the story he's telling about what happened to the home front heroes at the end of the war. I keep wondering if I'd only been there…"

"Stop. Please, Steve, you can't do this to yourself," Carol said. "Promise me this. Until this is over, only one guilt-trip at a time, okay?"

Steve's face lightened a little at this. "I'll try to stow away my baggage, if that's what you mean. I don't want to bog the team down. I just want to be able to help. It's just hard when everything about this reminds me of times I should have been able to help and couldn't."

"It gets to us all, Steve," Carol said. "Maybe all it takes is a little faith to pull through."

"Faith in what?" Steve asked.

Carol put her index finger on Steve's chest. "Faith in yourself."

_**The Adirondack Mountains**_

"So where are we going?" asked Cassie, following the three boys in the lead. They had naturally flanked out around her, but she hadn't seemed to notice. She was too busy being spooked by the darkness of the woods and the jagged landscape.

Bryon turned around. "The shadow says the Superhuman Deployment Division is headquartered up in the mountains somewhere ahead of us. He's scouting ahead, I think, although in this darkness he could be in front of me and I would never know it."

"_Boo_."

"Jeez!" Bryon shouted, stopping in his tracks. "You have a twisted sense of humor, you know that?"

The shadow materialized in the moonlight in front of them. "_I've found the entrance. It's one they used back in the fifties and sixties to shuttle out whoever they were defrosting for a mission. It sees little use now. It should be safe._"

"Emphasis on 'should'?" asked Eli, cocking a skeptical eyebrow.

The shadow hovered in front of Eli. "_You don't trust me. That's good. Your unwillingness to accept anything as fact will keep you alive longer in this game. Unfortunately, trusting me is our only chance of getting Kate back alive._"

The others began to move forward, but Eli remained where he was. Billy looked back over his shoulder. "You coming, Eli?"

Eli frowned. "Yeah. I'm coming."

"_Silence, now,_" said the shadow from ahead. "_I don't know how far out they have their sonic detectors. Our movements would be picked up as animal movements, but our voices would be recognized instantly as a threat to the sanctity of the control center and all of its operations._"

They trudged onward, keeping heavy in mind the fact that any whimper, grunt, or cry from stumbling might send the Deployment Division's guard dogs running. Eli guessed that they had walked a little over a mile when the shadow flittered over Bryon's shoulder. Bryon waved his fellow teammates forward. Eli guessed that they had arrived.

In the blink of an eye, something swung out of the trees, taking Bryon off his feet and into the darkness. Eli planted his feet in a defensive position, tuning his senses to his surroundings. The silhouette appeared again, this time taking Bryon with a kick in the gut.

"_Oh, no,_" whispered the shadow. "_No, this isn't right. This isn't right at all._"

"What's not right?" Eli asked, as the immeasurably fast silhouette slammed into Cassie just as she was beginning to change size.

The shadow flickered across the moonlight on Eli's chest. "_**He's**__not right,_" the shadow said.

It came for him, then, and Eli stood his ground. Both of the silhouette's feet crashed into Eli's chest, but he merely stumbled backward and grunted. "Wanna try that again?" he asked through gritted teeth.

The silhouette ceased its darting and leaping and halted in disbelief in front of Eli. As it came into the moonlight, he could see that it was the muscular form of a teenage boy in golden armor and a flowing red cape. "Impossible. The strength of Hercules failed to fell a mortal?"

"You'll have to do better than that, man," Eli said, itching for a fight. There was something about this kid that made Eli really want to knock his teeth in, the same way Bryon got on him a little.

The boy nodded. "I won't fail this time." Then he struck.

Eli took a blow on the shoulder that he felt more than he let on. Then, while the boy was unguarded, he launched a gloved fist into the boy's chin. "What's not right?" Eli asked under his breath. He knew the shadow was still with him.

"_That's Martin Burns, the Marvel Boy from back in World War II_," the shadow hissed, and Eli had the feeling that it was saying this from right beside his ear. "_If they're using him, it means they know_."

"It means they know what?" Eli asked, barely catching himself as he stepped backwards and grasped for Marvel Boy's cape. He whipped it around Marvel Boy's left leg, only to reel backwards as Marvel Boy leapt up with a kick from his right.

"_They're using him because of me, to catch me off guard. That must be it, because they know,_" the shadow said.

"Not to be a broken record, but what do they know?" Eli asked, with even more urgency. He landed another punch into the side of Marvel Boy's helmet, but it hardly seemed to faze the other teen. He wondered if the 'strength of Hercules' granted him a level of invulnerability as well.

"_It means that they know that I'm here…because I'm the one that gave him his powers_," the shadow said.

Eli opened his mouth to reply, but couldn't. He deflected another punch, painfully aware that he had next to zero combat experience. But his mind was worried about other things as well, like if Bryon knew just how much else the shadow hadn't told him.

*

"I can't believe we just ditched Eli back there!" Cassie spat, even as she tried to keep her voice down. "We need to go back!"

"He distracted that guy," Bryon said matter-of-factly. "We have to leave it at that. If we go back and defeat the guard they sent, they'll send more. They can do it. I've seen how many superhumans they have imprisoned here. Our only chance is to get in while Eli puts up a fight."

"And your little friend? The one you can't see at night?" Billy asked.

Bryon shrugged. "What he doesn't know won't kill him. He's kept me in the dark for so long, maybe it's time we see how things go if we make our own plan."

"As long as it doesn't get anyone killed," Billy muttered, following Bryon into the hatch that led into the Superhuman Deployment Division's headquarters. "Do you have any idea where we're going?"

"I think I have an idea," Bryon mumbled. "I was in here before, remember?"

"That's confidence-inspiring," Billy said, still sour after leaving Eli behind.

"No one's keeping you here, following me," Bryon said, stopping in his tracks. "If you want to go back, go back."

"Guys," Cassie said in a cautioning tone.

Billy's temper flared. "I haven't forgotten that the reason my family's apartment was blown up is because you grabbed an extra file, man! I would still be at home, probably in front of the TV with a plate of cookies and glass of milk right now instead of nursing a gash in my stomach and chasing after a guy who's going to kill some girl I've never met just because someone stuck an Avenger's name on my file! I have powers I didn't ask for that I never would have realized I had if you had just grabbed the folder with your name on it instead of the one with ours, too, okay? So don't talk to me like I'm the one who's causing _you_ grief!"

"Guys…" Cassie warned.

Bryon took off his mask so that he could look Billy face to face. "You know what? I could've just as easily left town without trying to find and save you guys to make up for my mistake, but I didn't. It may be my fault, but I'm trying my best not to screw this up worse. Like I said, if you want to help Eli, be my guest. As far as I'm concerned, Kate is the one in the most danger right now, and—"

"Guys!" Cassie said, growing to ten feet to separate the two. "We have incoming!"

"Cassie, shrink!" Bryon shouted, just as the men came around the corner. He could see that the Lieutenant hadn't bothered sending more defrosted supermen after them. This time he had gone straight for the boys with guns.

The man in the lead leveled his gun directly at Bryon as soon as he saw his target. "Freeze! We're under direct orders to terminate anyone who resists capture. If you try anything, any fighting, any magic, we will kill Kate Bishop as well."

"Crap," Billy muttered, holding up his hands. Bryon did the same.

The lead guard turned to one of his men at the side. "Heinberg, you and Cho get some duct tape on the wizard boy. Then the rest of you can get these boys in cuffs—the adamantium ones—and lead them down to the main room. Narfi wants to see them."

Cassie watched from her position in the shadows where she cowered, no more than six inches tall. She saw her older teammates being shackled together before they were led in a funeral-like procession down the dank hallway toward the place where Narfi lay waiting for them.

It wasn't until they were almost completely out of sight that Cassie felt it was safe to emerge from her shadowed hiding place. She only just got her head into the light when she heard someone coming down the hallway from the place they had entered. Pulling back, she witnessed the golden-armored form of another teenager dragging Eli's limp form down the hallway behind him, forcing her to cover up her astonished gasp. The supposedly-invulnerable Eli was bleeding profusely from his nose.

"_The best laid plans go to hell in a hurry, don't they?_" the shadow's voice whispered in Cassie's ear. Cassie jumped again, but held in her scream. "_Looks like you're the only one left, Cassie. Time to be a hero, eh?_"

*

_**Stingray's Quinjet**_

"Yep, I got it. I'm rerouting our course now," said Stingray into the radio, then hung up.

Michael looked up from the files he was glancing at on the Quinjet's onboard computer. "What was that?"

"It was Warbird. She gave me the coordinates to where they think the man who's been coordinating these attacks is holed up. We're going to meet them there and hopefully get this thing figured out once and for all," Stingray explained. "What have you come up with so far?"

Michael shrugged. "Honestly? Nothing." He shuffled some of the files around on the screen, then wheeled himself backwards out of the way so that Stingray could get a closer look. "Everything seems so random. From what I can gather, Eli Bradley and Billy Kaplan were attacked and should have died if not for their powers coming in at the exact right moment. But if the files describe their powers, these gunmen should have known that the guns would have been next to useless on Eli and that they might need something of a different caliber for Billy. The only one of us they killed was this Red Tigress girl in Wakanda. And the only one they maimed was, well, _me_."

"What do you think that means, though?" Stingray asked. "You would think that this meant that they were only actually trying to kill you and the Wakandan girl, while they meant to be sloppy with the others. You're also the only 'failure' that they sent a follow-up after."

"Nothing fits," Michael said. "You know what I found out? There haven't been any bystander casualties yet."

"Well, that's good," Stingray said.

"No, there's more to it than that," Michael said. "The three apartments below the Kaplan household were all crushed inward when Billy's powers manifested, but no one was inside. The residents were at home at the time, but they were teleported onto the street just as the building collapsed. Same thing goes for the Bradley occurrence. The neighbors' houses were strafed, too, but everyone ended up teleported across the street just before the gunfire opened up."

Stingray considered this. "So someone's orchestrating this, letting the kids know that they're onto them, but making sure no one else gets hurt? Or is there someone else who has knowledge of the targets and is just trying to get there a step ahead of time?"

"It seems like it," Michael agreed. "If we only just knew this Lieutenant guy's agenda, maybe this would make a little more sense."

Stingray nodded. "We can concentrate on the whys of what's happening after we take the Lieutenant down. As far as I'm concerned, he's gotten what's coming to him, which is the entirety of the Avengers coming to lay him out. By the time we're done with him, I hope to make sure _he's_ paralyzed from the waist down."

_**The Superhuman Deployment Division Headquarters**_

When Eli came to, he was shackled to a metal stand in the center of a circular room. Chained around him in a similar fashion were Bryon and Billy. He mentally kicked himself for letting Marvel Boy get the upper hand, but knew that there was nothing he could do about it from his position. The dried blood on his lips was a reminder of that.

There were guards circling the perimeter of the room, save for an area at the front that had two wide computer screens and a doorway. Eli watched as the light above the doorway switched from red to green.

"Atten-shun!" shouted one of the guards. The door slid open from the side, revealing a thin, older man with the markings of a high-ranking officer on his uniform. Eli guessed that he ranked higher than lieutenant, just by the look of fear in some of the guards' eyes at his presence.

"At ease, soldiers," Narfi said, eyeing the prisoners. "I thought you said you captured all of them?"

"We captured all those who attempted to enter the facility, sir," said one soldier.

Narfi unstrapped his gun and, without looking in the soldier's direction, fired it directly at him. The man crumpled to the ground, gripping his knee and moaning. "Anyone else want to admit to failure? Find the Lang girl. She's somewhere in the facility. I know it."

The soldiers all exited the room in a hurry. Two dragged their injured man out the door behind them. Once they were gone, Narfi looked at his prisoners. "Thought you'd pull one on me, didn't you? Well, that didn't exactly work. They'll be combing the facility for bio-signs and as soon as they hit a lock that isn't already registered in the database, we'll have one big happy family, won't we?"

"What are you talking about?" Bryon asked, struggling against his bonds even though it was clear he wasn't going to be breaking free.

Narfi laughed. "Still haven't figured it out, have you, kids? It's like all of the Brady kids' kids getting together for a family reunion, Avengers style! Maybe I if I change?" At his words, the façade of the war-weathered lieutenant faded, replaced with a much more youthful looking guise. Narfi now looked like a twenty-year-old playing dress up in military clothing. "That help?"

"Not really," Eli said.

Narfi nodded, as if he'd expected that. "Yeah, that's what my dad gets me for wearing that ugly-ass horned helmet all the time. You can't really tell we have the same hair, but then, I don't wear mine in a ponytail either."

"You know? I agree with Bryon for once. What are you talking about?" Eli asked. He wondered briefly why Billy wasn't saying anything before he realized that Billy's mouth had been duct taped shut all the way around his head.

Narfi paused and looked around behind him instead of answering. "Oh, look! We have visitors from the adults' party. That's no good." At his words, the screen on the left focused in on a Quinjet that was angling in on the facility from one side, and the screen on the right lit up on a second Quinjet that was coming in just as quickly. "Can we get some anti-aircraft guns and some rockets fired at the party crashers? Thank you!"

Again, his request occurred at his words as if by magic. They could do nothing but watch as rockets were fired up at the two Quinjets. The cameras lost sight of the aircrafts as they sank below the tree line, although whether their landing had been forced or crashed, none of them could tell.

"Phew, glad that's been taken care of. Now, where were we?" Narfi asked, then snapped his fingers. "That's right! I was going to follow through on my word!"

"Wait—what do you mean?" Eli asked, feeling more and more like a broken record.

Narfi turned his back to them, going back into the corridor between the two screens as he spoke. "Well, I'm going to do what I said I would do if you came after me." He emerged from the corridor pulling Kate Bishop by the hair. She was struggling, but the fight seemed to have been beaten out of her. "I'm going to kill Kate Bishop."

"Man, who the hell do you think you are?" asked Eli, struggling to get free.

Narfi closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm Narfi. I've told you that, for the love of Odin. Don't kids these days get a lesson or two in Norse mythology anymore? I'm a second-generation trickster, kiddos, and where Papa Loki brought together the Avengers…well, it looks like I've got me the young ones…"

_**To Be Concluded!**_

_Author's Note_

Hoo-boy, I think there are a few things. Oh, first off, the thing Michael was telling Stingray about some Plodex? That's happened in Prelude #2.

Other than that, hang in for the ride. One more issue before I catch up to the already-written Interlude #1, and then the series takes off from there!

Hunter Lambright


	7. Chapter 5

_For those of you just now joining us, you've missed a lot. _

_You see, in the 1940s, the United States government secretly kidnapped and cryogenically imprisoned its superheroes to be defrosted for missions in the decades to come. This program was masterminded by a man known only as Lieutenant Narfi. Sixty years after the initial imprisonment, Bill Bryon, the Young Avenger, was let out of his cell by the mysterious shadow that gave him his powers all those years ago. Bryon wanted to retrieve his file so that the Superhuman Deployment Division could never find and use him again. In the process, he also grabbed the Young Avenger__**s**__ file, which detailed the next generation of superheroes, thus endangering their lives. _

_Across the world, these powered teenagers were targeted by soldiers deployed with Narfi's teleporting capabilities. They killed Rala Shurat, the Red Tigress, in Wakanda and crippled Michael Corson in Florida, but were set back when targeting Eli Bradley and Billy Kaplan in New York. In the process, Bryon tracked down Cassie Lang, kidnapping her for her own protection, and incurring the wrath of the Avengers. _

_Brought together by fate, these Young Avengers discovered that Narfi had taken Kate Bishop, the "Next Hawkeye," hostage, and was threatening to kill her unless they stood down. The Young Avengers took off for the Superhuman Deployment Division under the shadow's guidance, but all except Cassie were captured. The Avengers, with Michael in tow, were shot down on the way to the S.D.D. When the kids woke up, Narfi led in Kate Bishop, saying that he was going to follow through on his word before revealing his true intentions as the son of longtime Avengers foe _**Loki**_…_

**Young Avengers #5: "Final Stretch" (**_**Legacy Lost**_** Part 5)**

**By Hunter Lambright**

_**The Superhuman Deployment Division**_

"Loki?" Eli asked in disbelief. "You're the kid of a god?"

Narfi stood there with one hand on his hip and the other grasping Kate Bishop's hair. "What're you gonna do about it? Crucify me?" He laughed. "On second thought, we can crucify Kate instead. She's a fitting Christ figure for our story, right? Just stick an arrow in each wrist and we're good to go."

"Screw you," spat Kate, struggling against Narfi's grasp even though every movement ripped at her scalp.

"Maybe another time, Kate," Narfi said with a sick grin. "Although that won't necessarily be a possibility in a minute. So, do you want it to be quick or painful? If my skills have improved, I can probably try to make it both. What do you say?"

"Why are you doing this?" Bryon asked, his head hanging low, as if he could not bring himself to look up at Narfi.

Narfi paused. "You really don't understand it, do you? I mean, I get that you've missed out on world events for the past sixty years, which means you probably can't point to Vietnam on a map or tell me what the Internet is, but you've already had contact with the Avengers! Surely you picked up on _something_, Bryon."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Bryon said. There was defeat in his voice. "All I know is that you're going to kill us all."

"No, it's not quite like that at all," said Narfi. "My intention has never been to kill you at all. I only ever meant to bring you together, and if I may say so myself, I've done a damn fine job of it."

There was a sudden crackle over the intercom, interrupting the exchange. "Lieutenant? We've got a forced entry on the west end of the facility. I'm sending a team to check it out."

"Is it the Avengers?" asked Narfi, his tone going drastically from whimsical to dead serious.

"The bio-scan doesn't recognize the bogie, so no, not one of the Avengers, sir. I'll keep you updated," said the man on the other end.

"That's good, then. Thank you," Narfi said, wiping his forehead. He turned back to the Young Avengers, his sickening smile set firmly back in place.

"Well, now, where were we?"

_**The West Entrance**_

Private Todd Emerson had no idea what he was getting himself into when he decided to go into covert operations as part of his military tour of duty. He had expected raids in the middle of the night and secret rescue operations overseas. Patrolling the corridors of a highly-illegal superhuman containment facility had not even been in the realm of Emerson's imagination when he signed the nondisclosure documents.

It happened to be Emerson's night at the west guard post when everything went wrong. He'd been hearing rumors through the night of intruders and aircraft being shot down, and all of this was hot on the heels of the whispers about an escaped prisoner a few nights before. So, when an unidentified person pushed open the west door with what sounded like quite a bit of effort, Emerson was almost relieved that something was actually happening to him on the job.

"Private Emerson reporting, sir. I'm closest to the bogie, and I'm going to try to get a visual lock on it. Over."

Emerson crept out of his station toward the docking station at the end of the hallway, where the computer reported the breach. He held his gun at the ready, gave one last glance heavenward, and turned around the corner to face the vile intruder.

A battered, wheelchair-bound teenager moved slowly down the loading ramp. The chair limped along, one of its wheels bent out of shape and the other nearly shredded from the terrain. His sandy blond hair had been matted with grease and dirt from whatever occurrence had ditched him deep in the Adirondacks. One of his arms was covered in a thick, red glove.

In a cracked, dry voice, the boy whispered, "Help. Please."

Emerson set his gun against the wall and ran over to the boy. "What happened? Are you okay? Is there anyone else out there?"

"Yeah, there is," said the boy, his voice now unmarred. "You bastards shot them down."

He reached out and grabbed Emerson by the arm with his gloved hand. At the boy's touch, Emerson lost control of his limbs as electricity rippled through his body, sending his muscles into convulsive spasms. He collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

"Good riddance," muttered Michael, struggling to push his wheelchair further into the facility. He and Stingray had been flying to the facility after receiving the coordinates from the Avengers when the Quinjet registered anti-aircraft missiles that had been fired at them. Stingray barely managed to get the planet to the ground in time. When the Quinjet finally settled into the ground, Michael had found Stingray unconscious. He was only able to get one of Stingray's electrified gauntlets off before setting off in hopes of finding the facility and getting revenge on his own.

Michael continued to wheel himself painstakingly into the building, knowing that every turn of the wheel took him deeper into the lion's den. That was when he realized that the lions were coming for him. They came in rows of three, their guns pointed directly at him. Michael realized with certainly that they would never get close enough for him to use Stingray's gauntlet.

The men came to a halt ten feet away from Michael. One man, who couldn't have been older than thirty, took point. "You are hereby under arrest for trespassing on government property and assaulting an officer of the military. You have the right to remain silent…"

Then, out of the shadows, hissed a voice. "_Now._"

Out of the center of the squadron of men grew the shape of a girl that kept growing. In fact, it was hard for Michael to say that she grew, because the change was so sudden that it appeared to be a teleportation. He could only tell the difference as the men were thrown out of the way to make way for the girl's sudden bulk as she filled the hallway. Her arms windmilled as she grew, sending the soldiers flying.

"Holy shit," whispered Michael.

"_Impressive, isn't it?_" whispered the voice he had heard earlier, this time coming from what felt like inches from his ear. Michael yelped and toppled out of the wheelchair.

Pushing himself up on one elbow, he stared up at the girl, who was forced to kneel in the cramped quarters. She was surrounded by the bowling pins she had made out of the men Michael had fancied as lions.

The shadows around Michael's outstretched legs converged into a man-shaped form. "_Michael, excuse the formalities, but meet Cassie. Prepare to swallow your pride_."

"Whether they know it or not, they pulled us out of hiding. We have to go!" Cassie said urgently. She scooped Michael up into her arms like a kitten, and Michael quickly realized what the shadow meant about swallowing his pride.

"_Then we only have this one chance! We have to free the prisoners that the department is holding and hope that they help us rescue the rest of the Young Avengers!_" shouted the shadow. "_Take the first left you see, and then turn right at the second intersection, Cassie! It will be the door at the end of the hallway!_"

Michael was jostled up and down in Cassie's arms as she stumbled down the cramped hallway in her giant size. They reached the first intersection that the shadow mentioned before the alarms in the facility began blaring once more. "_Move!_"

They reached the double doors that led into the Freezer in good time. Cassie knelt down and set Michael on the floor. Then she shrank down so that she could fit into the doorway. Michael scooted himself backwards along the icy concrete into the room as Cassie crouched. The doors clanged shut behind them, leaving them alone in the cemetery silence of the soundproofed Freezer.

"What are we looking for?" Cassie finally asked after a long moment's pause. Her breath ballooned in a white cloud in front of her face as she surveyed the room. It was filled with rows and rows of upright, man-sized capsules, but every last one of them was empty.

"_No,_" whispered the shadow, and, for the first time, it sounded defeated. "_They must have known we were coming and moved them all to…somewhere else._"

"Then what do we do? How are we going to save Bryon, Billy, Eli, and Kate?" Cassie asked. Her resolve faltered for a moment.

The shadow flickered in and out of focus. "_I don't know,_" it said.

"No," said Michael. "We're done with this defeatist bull crap, man. I wheeled myself out of a plane crash through the forest and I'm going to quit because the cavalry isn't where it's supposed to be? No way. We need to get in and do something. They took something from me, and I'm not leaving till I get what I came here for. What are we going to do? Go out and hope we can shake the Avengers awake before something awful happens? No way. It's up to us."

"_How do you plan on doing this?_" asked the shadow. "_Your army consists of a girl whose greatest ability is to change size who is trying to fight in cramped quarters, a man who is a mere shadow of himself and cannot touch anyone, save to blind them, and you, a crippled boy with a stolen gauntlet who, might I add, is bleeding out onto the floor._"

Michael grimaced. He reached back under his shirt to where the stitches had popped in the chaos. "I didn't say we had good odds, but man, how the heck am I going to be one of the so-called Young Avengers if I run the first time something needs avenging?"

Cassie looked at the shadow. "I'm with Michael. We came here to save Kate, but I won't leave until we save them all."

The shadow sighed. "_Then what do you have planned, other than your impending suicide?_"

Cassie cleared her throat. "I have an idea," she said, "and it might just work without getting anyone killed."

*

"I think he's waking up. Walter? Can you hear me?"

Walter Newell came to with a groan and winced. His head felt like it had been through the ringer, as if he had played football without a helmet for hours and then topped it off with enough alcohol to give him the worst hangover of his life. As his vision swam in and out of focus, he muttered, "Ugh, what happened?"

"They shot us out of the sky, that's what happened," spat Quicksilver. Walter could recognize Pietro's haughty tone of voice anywhere, even if he couldn't quite see the blue-and-silver clad speedster.

"How did you guys make it out all right?" Walter asked. He popped his neck painfully. He could make out the forms of the Avengers. "I got pretty beat up myself."

"Binary and Warbird caught a few of us, and Ant-Man grew fast enough to avoid the trees causing him any major harm. Espirita broke her arm, but it healed already, go figure," said Pietro. "Need a hand?"

Before Walter could respond, Quicksilver sped around him, unsnapping the seatbelt and pulling some of the fallen debris out of the way. "Thanks," said Walter, standing up. He looked down at his hands. "Where's my other gauntlet?" Then he looked around. "Wait—where's Michael?"

"He must have gone inside," said Captain America. He pointed at the ragged wheelchair path that dug its way into the woods. "We took too long to get regrouped. He's probably in there by now."

"Then what are we waiting for?" asked Warbird. "Let's go do some avenging."

*

"I have a question," Bryon said, staring up at Narfi.. "It wasn't the shadow or chance, was it? It was you who set me free. If you wanted to orchestrate this grouping, that was something that couldn't have happened by chance, is it?"

Narfi looked at Bryon with an almost pleased expression. "Good job. The pawn, for the first time, has acknowledged the grandmaster. The shadow took advantage of what he thought was an accident. He was as much a pawn here as all of you were."

"So now that you have us together, what are you going to do? What are we _supposed_ to do now that we're together?" asked Eli. "Or have you even thought that far ahead yet?"

"Well, first I'm going to teach you a lesson," Narfi said. "I'm going to kill Kate Bishop because you didn't do what I told you to. So there's step one. After that, well, there are plans. I saw this all, you see. Bit of a curse, actually, the visions. I saw that something was going to happen that you need to be together for, but there was no way you would be together unless you were _brought_ together. And, unfortunately, it is something that affects even me. Funny how that works out, right?"

"You're saying you did this because you prophesized that it needed to happen?" Eli asked incredulously. "You're more deluded than I thought!"

"Actually, it explain things better than the explanation you're running on right now," Narfi said. "Some day in the future, you kids are going to save the world. It may be next week, or it may be in fifty years. I'm doing my part because, well, maybe now Loki will realize things have changed in his absence."

"Your logic is…I don't even have a word for it! It just doesn't make sense," Eli said. "You brought us together. Just fricking let us go already, man!"

"No can do, Little Boy Blue," Narfi said. "Love the costume, by the way. But really, things don't always work out like that, do they? Things never go the way they're supposed to."

With an explosive force, the door at the back of the room slammed open. "You've got that right!" shouted Cassie Lang, shoving her way into the room.

In the blink of an eye, as Narfi stood there momentarily stunned, he realized that he was no longer holding onto Kate Bishop by the hair, but rather, he was holding onto a handful of her hair. The other difference was that she was no longer kneeling, but was instead standing on one foot while kicking the other one straight up between his legs. "Son of a—!"

Kate didn't wait for him to finish. She ran over to where Bryon, Billy, and Eli were being held prison. There was no time to be careful. She ripped the duct tape away from Billy's mouth. "Get them free!" she said. "Let's go!"

Michael crawled in near Cassie. "Can't you get through?" he asked hurriedly.

"I'm stuck! I'll have to shrink down to get in there!" she said.

"No! He's recovering _now_!" Michael yelled. "Throw me, like a fastball special. I can stun him with the gauntlet. Otherwise he'll teleport away like he's teleported all his soldiers away!"

"_What are you, the Young X-Men?_" asked the shadow, and Michael could tell that the shadow would have rolled its eyes if it had any.

Cassie lifted Michael up and threw him gracelessly across the room. He landed on Lieutenant Narfi just as he was about to get up. "You!" Narfi shouted in surprise. "You're not supposed to be here! You aren't part of the plan!"

"Your plan can go to hell!" Michael shouted. He grabbed Narfi by the neck with his electrified gauntlet. Hundreds and hundreds of volts of electricity poured into the demigod's body, causing it to spasm in shock.

Meanwhile, the room had filled with chanting. "_Iwantustobefree… __Iwantustobefree… __Iwantustobefree…_" Billy said, his eyes glowing with a turquoise aura. There was a bright flash, and suddenly he, Bryon, and Eli were no longer trapped by their chains.

"Come on! Let's fight!" Bryon shouted. Soldiers had responded to the commotion and entered the room in pairs. Cassie continued to seal the main entrance with her bulk, although she felt several bullets hit her thighs and ricochet off Billy's magical unstable molecule concoction. They were painful, but it was a necessary pain. It kept the fight from growing too one-sided.

Eli advanced on a soldier, knocking the man's gun to the side. The man brought the barrel of the gun right back at Eli, sideswiping him on the face with it. He lowered the barrel, preparing to unload the gun into Eli's face. Kate stepped in, knocked the barrel upward, and karate chopped the man in the gut. Then she flipped the gun upside down and swiped the man on the side of the head with the butt of his own rifle.

Eli's eyes grew wide. "Man, am I glad you're on our side," he muttered.

Kate eyed him angrily. "If you ever try to save me again, I will kick your ass. I had it handled until you idiots showed up."

"Sure you did," Eli said angrily, his awe dissolving in the face of his own stubbornness. "That's why he kept wanting to kill you, because you totally had the upper hand."

"Let's fight the bad guys, what do you guys say?" asked Billy, floating over in their direction. A bolt of blue lightning flew out of his hands at another soldier who entered the doorway, taking him to the ground. Kate and Eli grudgingly separated and took up positions on either side of the doorway.

Bryon knocked one soldier in the teeth and stepped away, tangling a second soldier in his cape before knocking him out as well. "There are more and more of them. How many soldiers does Narfi employ?"

"_Too many,_" said the shadow. "_I would guess half of them are illusionary, created with Narfi's powers_."

"Good call," said Narfi, standing over them. The fighting ceased as the soldiers disappeared. "The Superhuman Deployment Division employs twelve full-time soldiers, and all of them were taken out before you all gained the upper hand. However, I think gained it back." His right hand gripped the back of Michael's shirt, holding the unconscious boy upright. "Michael here is going to bleed out soon from ignoring his doctor's orders. I have a pretty nice bargaining chip. What do you have?"

There was a blast of air as someone extremely fast entered the room. "Stop this nonsense," said Quicksilver, noting that this was one of the few times in his life he had ever been late to the action. He held up a manila folder. "The shadow gave me the location of the folder with the information on the teenagers you have been attempting to assassinate. If I give this back, you'll be the only one with this information. You won't have to kill them any more."

"You missed the part where I get these visions sometimes, Quicksilver," Narfi sneered. "I know for a fact that you hit up every copy machine in New York City an hour ago to get that entire file copied in less than five minutes so that you could give me my file and still have the info. So yeah, I knew you would try this."

Quicksilver cocked an eyebrow. He set the file down on the ground. Then, although he didn't appear to move at all, Michael's fallen form suddenly appeared in his arms. "Well, there went diplomacy," Pietro muttered, then ran out the door with Michael's body in tow.

"Narfi," said a new voice. Captain America stepped into the room. The rest of the active Avengers roster filed in behind him. "It's over. Don't you think you've tortured these children enough?"

Narfi rubbed his chin as he stared up and down the line of Avengers. "For now, I suppose," he said. Then, in a flash of light, he disappeared.

*

_**Avengers Mansion**_

"Michael has been stabilized," confirmed Espirita, as she stepped into the conference room and sat down with the rest of the Avengers.

"Good," said Captain America. He looked across the table at the assembled Young Avengers. "There's something we still have to address, though. We have to figure out what's going to happen with you all now."

"I thought they would all go back to their normal lives," said Stingray. His jaw shifted to the side under his mask.

"All due respect, Mr. Stingray, but in case you hadn't realized it, I exploded my house, Michael got shot, Eli's grandparents' house was imploded, Kate was kidnapped—and so was Cassie, actually, and Bryon, well, he doesn't exactly have a normal life now," said Billy. "So there's not exactly a good way for us to do that, sir."

Scott Lang cleared his throat. "I've actually been thinking about it, and, with the Avengers' approval, I'd like to take these kids under my wing to see what we can do about making them better able to defend themselves and, hopefully, the world at large in the future."

"That's actually not a bad idea," said Carol. "You kids know that the world out there isn't pretty anymore. You've done a lot of growing up in the past twenty-four hours. If you're going to be out there anyway, I think this is a great way to do it."

"There are some details we would have to work out, though," said Captain America. "Would they still go to school, would they operate out of Avengers Mansion? There are a lot of small things we'd have to get worked out, the least of which is parental permission."

"I think they've been through enough for one day without having to worry about how to convince their parents to let them join a super-hero club," said Carol. "If Scott says he wants to handle it, I say that's good enough for me for now."

"Good," said Eli. "It's settled, then."

"So what are going to call ourselves?" asked Billy. "I heard the New Warriors disbanded. We could use their name."

"_Why not just go with the name on the file?_" suggested the shadow.

"The Young Avengers," said Bryon, testing it out. He smiled. "Yeah. That's good enough for me."

*

_**The Superhuman Deployment Division**_

Narfi stood in the quiet emptiness of the Freezer. The team that had come together wasn't the same team that was in his vision. There was time, of course, for their roster to change, but Narfi wondered just how many of the strings he would have to pull for himself.

He looked at the frozen blood that was smeared where Michael had come into the Freezer. He was the anomaly. He was the one who should have died but hadn't.

Narfi bit down on his tongue in anger. If fate wouldn't fix things, he would.

At a split-second's thought, Narfi materialized in his weapons facility in Spain. The assembly lines whirred with the production of various machine and missile types. "There's been a change of plans," he said, looking at his top engineer. "We have to begin earlier than I expected. Begin putting the Iron Manacle into production."

*

_**Central Park**_

"So," said Bryon, sitting down on the park bench. "You wanted to see me, Mr. Rogers?"

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The park was full of people out enjoying their day. They were walking their dogs, jogging, and having a good time, completely ignorant of the dirty secrets that had been lost in the folds of the great, annoying accordion that was their government.

"Please, Bryon. Call me Steve," said Captain America. They were both out of costume, although it was Bryon who looked most out of place in this picture. It was a sure sign of the difference in how long each of them had spent in the modern era. Steve had been given some time to adapt. Bryon was still learning. "I just thought it might be good to talk to you. After all, I know a thing or two about what it's like to wake up out of the ice and have the entire world change around you."

"It's a lot to take in," Bryon admitted, fiddling with the string on his sweatshirt. "I mean, Alaska is one of the United States? We went to war with Vietnam? We no longer fight for justice, but for oil?" He shook his head. "I don't know how you do it."

Steve narrowed his eyebrows. "I'm not sure what you mean, Bryon."

Bryon grimaced. "You wear the stars and stripes of America, but America has changed so much since you first took up that guise. It's no longer a country to be proud of, but a country full of greed-swollen swine whose daily efforts are more likely to include not getting caught sleeping with another woman instead of trying to be a good neighbor. It's something that's bothered me ever since I woke up, and it makes me sick every time I think about it."

"I hate to tell you this, Bryon, but that's a feeling that doesn't go away," Steve replied. "But then, you have to decide who you're fighting for. Who are you protecting? When the Avengers fight off an alien invasion or Ultron or whoever, they aren't doing it so that politicians can remain in their seats and criminals can stay in their comfortable jail cells. They do it for another reason entirely."

"Oh, what is that?" Bryon asked skeptically.

"We do it because we know that for every person who doesn't deserve protection, there is at least one more that does. For every villain sitting in the Vault, there are three or four fledgling heroes trying to make a difference in the world. For every corrupt politician, there is one who is campaigning for all instead of the few. And, most importantly, for every thug and criminal on the street, there is someone like you or Billy or Eli or the rest of you kids trying to put them away and inspire hope," Steve said. "We call ourselves the Avengers because we hope that maybe with our legacy, we can avenge the injustice of the past."

"And what if we fail?" Bryon asked, shouldering the responsibility to the generation he was prepared to fully embrace as his own.

Steve chuckled. "You kids are some of the most stubborn, duty-driven teenagers I have ever met in my life. Believe me, you won't fail."

"Thanks, Cap," said Bryon, getting up to go. "I mean it. Your faith in us, it means a lot. Maybe the dream isn't dead after all." Then, without another word, he turned around and walked off into the concrete jungle that surrounded Central Park.

*

"That looked like it went well," said Carol Danvers, taking out her earphones and shutting off her iPod. "How's he adjusting?"

Steve looked up and smiled. "He'll make it. He's a tough kid, reminds me of…" He trailed off.

"Reminds you of who?" Carol asked knowingly.

"Myself," Steve lied, looking down at the sidewalk.

"You were going to say he reminds you of Bucky, weren't you?" Carol asked, taking a seat on the bench next to him. Steve said nothing. "You've got to stop beating yourself up over that, Steve. I know the scars from old wounds when I see them."

"I just don't want to screw up again, Carol," said Steve, shaking his head. "I'm just so worried that we're going to get these kids killed by bringing them into the game this early. It's happened before."

Carol smiled. "I don't know if it's God or fate or whoever the little scientology alien god is, but whoever it is just gave you another chance, Steve. Maybe now is a good time to just take it and stop worrying about what's going to happen. You've been deal a fresh hand, so put on your poker face and start letting yourself win for once."

A moment passed where nothing was said. Then Steve looked up at Carol and returned her smile. "You know, I used to think that leaving a legacy meant having others follow a path and making sure everyone remembered your ideals. Now that my legacy is here, though, well, maybe it's about something else, too."

"And what's that?" Carol asked.

Steve shrugged. "Redemption, optimism, and maybe a handful of vigor and courage. Really, that's what the Avengers are all about anyway. It's a recipe for heroism."

Carol squeezed Steve's shoulder. "Look at those kids, then, Steve. If they're going to be anything, it's heroes."

_**The End**_

_Author's Note_

Wow. That took a little longer than I expected, but it was well worth the wait because, well, I'm happy with how it turned out. Hopefully I wrapped things up well enough based on the dangling plotlines and the things you had questions about. If Narfi's plan doesn't make sense to you, don't worry. It will. He's going to be around for some time to come.

So what's next? Well, continuity-wise, check out the Interlude #1 for a story centered around the Young Avenger and the shadow at Christmas. Then swing back over here for the upcoming Young Avengers Annual, which will explain just who and what the shadow is, and what his agenda is. Then, before you catch your breath, hang around for my second arc on the series, tentatively titled "Street Drugs." Hopefully it won't be what you expected.

Hunter Lambright (3/29/09)


	8. Interlude 1

**Young Avengers Interlude #1: **

"**Shadow in the Snow" featuring the Young Avenger**

**By Hunter Lambright**

_Note: This story takes place after Young Avengers #5, for all those concerned. _

*

New York City near Christmas was like Myrtle Beach around spring break, with a lot less skin showing and more snow forts than sandcastles. Actually, when put that way, the only major similarity was the number of people who trekked the streets as opposed to the boardwalk, carrying bags stuffed with gift purchases instead of towels and sunscreen. The nitty-gritty of the matter was that comparing New York City to Myrtle Beach was like trying to compare the New York City of today to the New York City of 1945.

There were still buildings, but many of them bustled with a startling electric light that Bryon imagined had been dimmer in the New York City of his time. He spent at least twenty minutes in Times Square alone, whirling around at the sights the ravaged his senses. The teenager was not quite as bundled up as many of his fellow New Yorkers, trading double layers of clothing for a layer of spandex beneath the first layer of his clothing. The dark green outfit, when exposed to the light of day, marked Bryon as the hero called the Young Avenger. For now, however, he was just Bryon.

"You know, I haven't told them yet that Bryon is my last name," he said to the thin air. "I never really liked the name 'Bill,' though, and let's face it: the rest of the Bryons are long gone." His voice was melancholy as he walked, despite the fervor in the air that signaled the long-awaited approach of the holidays.

"_Why so down, Bryon?_" the thin air responded back. There, inside Bryon's own silhouette hid the enigmatic shadow that had followed him around ever since it had granted him his powers over sixty years ago. When Bryon didn't respond, the shadow said, "_Oh, I see. You're mourning._"

"Mourning? What am I mourning, then?" Bryon asked, frowning. He hated when the shadow played games with him, especially when he was in a mood like this.

"_Yourself, or at least your old self,_" the shadow said, and Bryon could not deny its words. Ever since emerging from the Freezer, he had felt like someone had taken everything that had made him _him_ before and taken it out, throwing it away like the anachronism he was. He was expected to adapt to the present, but it was hard when so much of the present was so different from the past, which was just weeks ago for Bryon.

"I just feel so…out of touch," Bryon said, his head hanging morosely. "This is my seventeenth, eighteenth Christmas, but it might as well be my first! Everywhere we go, I see signs advertising wonderful 'holidays,' and I feel like I'm missing something. I don't know what half these holiday even are." He paused, as something clicked inside his head. "If this makes just a few less than twenty Christmases for me, how many does that make for you?"

"_Somewhere_ _around_ _a_ _hundred_," said the shadow glumly, "_although_ _I'd_ _say_ _we're_ _nearing_ _the_ _end_ _of_ _that particular_ _rope_."

"What do you mean?" Bryon asked, taken aback. "Are you dying?"

"_All in good time,_" the shadow replied, and said no more on the subject.

Bryon shrugged it off, watching as snow began to fall upon the city. The flakes were caught by the artificial canyon's winds and swept up and down the crowded streets, catching in the hair of passersby. It was hard to think of them as everyday people and not stage characters, complete with futuristic garments and unbelievable accents.

"I should go back," Bryon said, feeling cut off and alone. His only tie between the past and the present was his uniform, and the figurative mask that went on with his spandex mask helped him lose himself. "Someone probably needs me out there."

The shadow said nothing. Bryon saw it float off in the corner of his eye, leaving him alone when he felt his loneliest. He felt like he had no purpose, no one around who really cared about him the way his family had. They were all gone now. He'd checked as soon as the fiasco with the Superhuman Deployment Division was over. People always acted like waking up and finding your world turned upside down was impossible, meant only as a rhetorical question, but Bryon felt every bit of those words.

Without the shadow prodding him along, Bryon had nothing holding him back from returning to the Hideout, the super clubhouse he'd helped construct back in the days of the war, when there looked like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. They hadn't known that light was green and radioactive at the time, but it had still been an optimistic time. He, Marvel Boy, and a few others had set up the Hideout as a way of escaping the constant attacks by anti-war protestors with super-powers and Nazis that were attempting to make their mark on American soil. Now the place was a shambles, but it was still a piece of home. He would leave his outer layers there and head out on patrol. Maybe the cold air and calm atmosphere of the rooftops would clear his mind and his depression.

After he made sure the alleyway near the Hideout was empty, Bryon moved quickly, stripping down to the tight costume underneath. He had taken to wearing two layers of the stretchy fabric to ward off the winter chill. He pulled open a hidden sliding handle and stuffed his civilian clothes into the box below, locking it tight. When he went down to the Hideout later, he would find his clothes down in the Hideout, warm and toasty.

Bryon pulled down the fire escape and mounted it, yanking the iron staircase back up behind him. He'd spent the first weekend after things had settled to grease and oil it so that the clanking wouldn't alert any of the nearby people. The hard part hadn't been getting it noiseless. The hinge was the same specially-designed ratchet they had installed back in the forties. It was getting that hinge unstuck after years without use that had been the cause of most of his labor. Bryon had relished in it, though. It had taken him away from his thoughts.

He was glad he'd chosen the rooftops over traversing the city through the sewers. Christmas aromas filled the air, and he knew that there was another thing that hadn't changed after all this time. Cinnamon mixed with the stench of pollution, and mint and exhaust fumes twisted into one. He noted the change in the smells as he jumped from rooftop to rooftop, climbing higher into the city. His muscles, enhanced tremendously by whatever the shadow had done to him so long ago, propelled his lithe form into a leap that rivaled those executed by Spider-Man himself.

Staring down across the city, Bryon wondered what it would be like to plunge from such a height. He knew it would be a difficult feat to pull off, what with all the costumed adventurers patrolling the city blocks. Then there was the likelihood that, with his level of durability, he might only succeed in injuring himself.

Besides, the others counted on him, and he had a good idea that Cassie's feelings for him went further than their mutual friendship. Stockholm syndrome on crack, Billy called it. Bryon tried to ignore it all. They were casualties, and they didn't even know it. They were Bryon's responsibility since he'd taken the folder with their files in it, and he didn't want to get close to them in case he failed them.

He couldn't fail them. A swan dive wasn't even an option. Bryon shook that out of his head. Maybe the shadow was worth more than just a few snippets of annoying conversation. Sometimes it actually had reason.

"Help! God, someone help—ah!"

Bryon turned, zeroing in on the source of the noise. He leapt down a building, cape rustling with the snowy breeze, and saw that he was in luck. The source of the call for help was on his side of the street, which meant he would be able to get there faster than he would if he had to vault over several lanes of traffic.

He swung down over the side of the building, bracing for the impact. Landing mercifully on his feet atop several sacks of garbage in the alleyway, the Young Avenger held his fists up in a ready position. There were three teenagers in the alley, and two of them were beating the crap out of the third. One of the two attackers was tall and stocky, while the other was thin and short. The boy backed against the wall was well-built with blond hair and pierced ears. He wasn't fighting back, and blood trickled from his nose.

"Step back, gentlemen, if you value your well-being," Bryon said, fixing them with the angriest look he could come up with. Considering his mood, he had a feeling it was one of the better angry looks of his career.

The two thugs stepped away from the blond, which meant Bryon had accomplished the first goal. At first, they were confused, likely thinking that it was just some random guy off the street stepping in to mess with their business, but they soon realized that they were actually dealing with a random guy in spandex. That changed things somewhat.

"Run for it, man!" shouted the short and skinny one. The bulky thug reacted several seconds later, struggling to move his mass out of the alleyway in a fashion that hardly resembled speed. Bryon started to run after them.

"No!" said the injured boy. "Just…let them go. It'll already be bad enough when I go back anyway. No reason in giving them another reason to be pissed at me, you know?" Bryon didn't, but he didn't say anything to the contrary.

He held out a hand to help the boy to his feet. The boy accepted Bryon's hand with one of his own, while trying to stifling the blood flow from his nostrils with the other. "You're the Young Avenger, aren't you?" the boy asked, flecks of blood flying from his lips as he spoke. "This is so cool! A real superhero just saved me!"

"It's what anyone would have done," said Bryon, folding his hands behind his back.

"There were at least seven or eight people who saw me get dragged in here by those creeps," the boy said. "You did what they didn't, so thanks for helping me. I'm Teddy, by the way. I figure it's not right that I know who you are and you don't know who I am."

"Nice to meet you, Teddy," said Bryon. The blood flow from Teddy's nose seemed to have stifled some, and Bryon noticed grimly that the red mask that dripped down his face and his green shirt made him the poster child for a Christmas-themed horror film. "Do you know those guys, Teddy?"

"Yeah," Teddy replied, wiping blood unceremoniously with his shirtsleeve. "Just some creeps at my school. I'll deal with them." He said the last part with a look of determination that rivaled the one Bryon had just given the two delinquents.

"I hope you can," Bryon said. "Look, I need to go now, but you probably need to go get that checked out, all right?"

"I will," Teddy replied. As Bryon began scaling the side of the building, Teddy added, "Thanks for standing up for me, man, and Merry Christmas!"

Bryon looked back and waved, warmed somewhat from the inside. There were still people out there in worse situations. Sure, they were far more ordinary situations, but they were worse nonetheless. He was only glad he'd been able to make a difference in one life today. Noting how much time had passed since he had started his patrol, Bryon began to make his way back to the Hideout again.

He swung down the fire escape just in time to feel a cold, wet missile slam into the side of his head. He landed on his feet in a catlike crouch, searching for the source of the attack. Several more projectiles hit him in the head and upper torso, sending waves of chills through Bryon's body.

The next sound that Bryon heard was not an attack call. It was laughter. "Got ya!" shouted Eli, sending several more snowballs sailing in Bryon's direction.

"Hey, no fair!" shouted Bryon good-naturedly, even as he bent to scoop some of the snow, packing it into a semi-round shape that he sent hurtling into Eli's polished, bald dome. The black teenager's entire body shivered even as it was wracked with laughter. Bryon caught a glimpse of the shadow's form flitting across the walls behind them.

Then Cassie, Kate, and Billy returned fire at Bryon, sending him diving for cover against a dumpster. "Okay, okay! White flag, guys!" Bryon shouted, laughing and holding up his hands over the edge of the dumpster.

"Cease fire!" shouted Billy. Bryon heard their footsteps coming and shielded himself, prepared for a barrage of last-second snowballs, but they didn't come.

Kate grabbed him by the shoulder, her long black hair bound only by a knit headband. "Come on, Bryon, let's go inside," she said urgently.

"What's going on?" Bryon asked, but no one said a word. Everyone crowded into the hidden entrance in front of him, even as Kate pushed him inside. As the bodies in front of him all stepped out of the way, Bryon finally saw what was so important.

The Hideout was no longer the trashed shell of its former glory. In fact, now it was unarguably better than it had been. The peeling wallpaper was gone, replaced with a solid goldenrod. The broken wooden slats that had been the floor had been fixed and covered in a thick, red carpet. The bare light bulb had been replaced with two sets of halogen lights that set the room ablaze. Everything that had been broken or outdated had been fixed.

"What do you think?" asked Kate, smiling at Bryon's open mouth. "Cassie thought you might be a little homesick, so I ordered some supplies. We've been coming here pretty much every free moment of our lives over the past week."

"It's…amazing," said Bryon, pulling his mask back and trying not to shed any tears of joy or excitement.

"Glad you like it," said Michael, wheeling over to the rest of the group from the back of the room in his wheelchair. "It's all we could do after what you've been trying to do for us."

Bryon uttered his profuse thanks, staring at everything while seeing the memories that came flooding back to him with the wholeness of what the Hideout had once been, and was again.

"_Welcome home, Bryon,_" said the shadow. "_Merry Christmas_."

Bryon knew that the shadow had summed it up best. There was no other place—no other _time_—that he'd rather be.

_~End_


	9. Chapter 6

**Young Avengers #6: I'm Not Who I Think I Am (**_**Changing Shape**_** Part 1)**

**Hunter Lambright**

_**The Altman Residence**_

_**New York City**_

"Right, and that's why, when you plug in the x-values, none of them will cross the asymptote, because if you divide by zero, well, your head will explode." Billy Kaplan looked up from the math book to the tousle-haired boy in the desk chair next to him. "Of course, by the time I get done with algebra, my head usually feels like it's going to explode whether I divide by zero or not."

Teddy Altman grimaced. "Yeah, tell me about it." He put his pencil down to the graph paper. "Where were we at, with the x-values? Or did we start with the asymp-thingy?"

"Start with the asymptote," Billy suggested. "It makes it easier to tell if something's going wrong later when you try to calculate the y-values. If it makes you feel any better, I hate quadratic functions as much as the next guy."

"You mean there are people who don't hate them?" Teddy asked with a wry grin.

Billy shrugged. "Only math teachers…and super-villains," he added as an afterthought.

"All this time I thought they were one and the same," Teddy said.

Billy laughed, and then took a look at his watch. "Crap, crap, crap," he muttered. "Is that right?"

"Is what right? The time?" Teddy asked. "It's a quarter after four. What's wrong?"

"I have, uh, job training at 4:30," Billy said. "If I go now, I can make it, but…" His voice dragged off as his eyes drifted toward the incomplete math assignment.

Teddy shrugged. "It's not like you're required to help me out. I'll work out what I can and then call later, if I can? If you don't mind, I mean…"

Billy nodded. "That's fine, of course. I feel bad enough leaving you as it is. Got my number?"

"Yeah, I've got it," Teddy said, double-checking his contacts list. "And Billy? Thanks for doing this. This is probably the only thing still keeping me afloat in Mrs. Creighton's class."

"No problem. Glad to help, really." He packed up his backpack and headed for the door. "Sorry for having to split. Talk to you later!"

Teddy nodded and watched the door long after it had slammed shut.

*

_**The Hideout**_

"_Iwanttogetthereontime…Iwanttogetthereontime…_" Billy opened one eye and felt his cheeks grow red with the heat of embarrassment. "Hey, guys. I made it."

"What took you so long?" Kate asked, peering at him over her purple-tinted sunglasses. A high-tech bow sat in a harness on her back, stretching up over her head.

Billy rolled his eyes. "I was helping my mom's friend's son with algebra and lost track of time. I made it on time, though, right?"

"Technically," said Michael. The wheelchair-bound boy rolled up next to Kate. "I mean, you're even in costume. It's just that everyone else was here, like half an hour ago in anticipation for the first day on patrol or whatever."

"Sorry," Billy said. "I just didn't want to bail on a prior commitment, you know?"

"It's fine, guys. Lay off him," said Eli Bradley, the Patriot. "I was just worried about trying to explain it to Mr. Lang, whenever he gets here."

Bryon, the Young Avenger, stifled a laugh. "Mr. Lang and Cassie have been here for about ten minutes now watching everyone bicker."

He gestured toward the air duct that tapered down into the space of the Hideout. What had once been a headquarters for a World War II era teenage hero group had been modernized for the new generation of heroes that had come to call it home. From the air duct there came a buzzing noise. Then a pair of flying ants came into view. One carried Scott Lang himself. The other carried Cassie, his daughter. Together, they dismounted their insect steeds and grew to normal size.

Eli, in his frustration, turned to Bryon and said, "Man, who even says 'bicker' anymore?"

"Glad to see everyone made it," Scott said quickly, removing the polished Ant-Man helmet and setting it on the table. He looked at Billy. "Teleportation has its uses, eh?"

Billy's ears grew redder. "Sorry, sir."

"Don't worry about it. You made it. That's what counts," said Scott. "So do you guys know why I had you meet here today?"

"_Presumably you're going to tell them anyway,_" said a new voice. It came from a misshaped shadow that hung on the wall, hovering just inside the darkness that made it invisible.

Scott wasn't put off by the shadow. "I have to admit that you have a point. I guess I thought that I'd been running you guys hard enough already, especially knowing that you all have some kind of experience. I thought you might want to take a little bit of patrol today."

"Patrol?" Billy asked. "Are you kidding me? I can't believe we're actually going to feel like super-heroes!"

*

_**Two Hours Later**_

"This is patrol?" Billy sat with his chin propped up against his hands. The rooftop that he had been assigned had been quiet. He looked at Cassie. "Did your dad ever tell you how boring it is?"

Cassie looked up. "Dad never built it up to be anything it isn't. It's just about being out and about in case you're needed. Usually New York's streets are protected by the bigger names out there, but it was a nice thought that they might actually need us for once."

"I guess," Billy said, sighing. "Has anyone else gotten any action yet?"

"The last thing we heard was that Bryon and the shadow had tagged a hit on some nobody trying to blow out the screens in Times Square, but nothing else besides that," Cassie said.

Billy grimaced. "It's not fair. Bryon has the most experience in doing this under his belt, so he gets to take on the bad guys? This isn't what I signed up for."

"You didn't sign up for it," Cassie reminded him. "Your parents did. And be careful, or you'll start sounding like Eli."

"Speaking of Eli, if I'm this bored, then can you imagine how bad it has to be right now between him and Kate? I wouldn't leave them alone for twenty minutes, but two hours…" Billy's voice drifted off.

Cassie nodded. "Yeah, I doubt even Dad could hold off a fight between those two."

*

"You owe me twenty dollars now. Want to go for another?" Kate asked, prying one of Eli's throwing stars from the wall. "Or do you still think you can win it all back?"

"That's not fair—you're cheating somehow!" Eli said, his face contorting underneath the red domino mask.

Kate pretended to take offense. "Me cheat? Eli, you wanted to see who could hit your target better. You even made me stop using my arrows and start using your stars. You still keep losing. How am I cheating?"

"You—you rigged it somehow! You knew I would do this," Eli said, but his voice got quieter as he realized how pathetic his argument was.

"Give up yet?" Kate asked.

"Yeah, but only because we're wearing the points off my stars," Eli muttered.

"Right, and not because I was kicking your butt," Kate said, putting her hands on her hips. "Are you going to give me my twenty now or later?"

"Later," Eli grumbled.

Kate paused. "You hear something?"

"No, like what?"

"Screaming."

Kate peered over the edge of the building and then ran for her bow and quiver of arrows. "Fire escape, now!"

"What's going on?" Eli demanded.

"Some dude in a metal suit is attacking people for some reason!" Kate replied, her voice almost drowned out as her footsteps clanked down the iron fire escape. The metal contraption shuddered with each of their footsteps, even more so as Eli joined the mad rush down the building. They reached the end of the escape and leaped down, sprinting out of the alleyway and toward the insanity.

A man in a copper-colored metal suit fired energy blasts into the crowd of scattering people. Wires ran up the collar of the suit and against the back of his bald head and neck. "Finally!" he shouted, eyeing Eli and Kate. "Superheroes have come to challenge the might of Carapace!"

"Carapace? Who the hell calls himself Carapace?" Eli asked, watching as one of Kate's arrows glanced off the metal-costumed man's suit. "I'm going to make my money back before you know it!"

Carapace's face reddened. "You're using me to make bets?" Then he shouted, letting loose a guttural, animalistic noise of rage.

Kate drew an arrow back in her bow, but Eli tackled her to the ground. A split-second later, the energy blast that Carapace had been charging up ripped across the concrete where she had been standing. "Uh…thanks," Kate said, trying to brush off what had just happened.

Carapace hovered over the pair, forming a large ball of sizzling orange energy between his hands.

"_Not so fast,_" the shadow hissed. Its form fell over Carapace's eyes, blinding him. The man took two steps backward, as if backing away from the shadow would clear his vision. His left leg flew out from under him as the Young Avenger kicked his knee out from behind

There was a loud ringing noise as Carapace's armor vibrated on impact with the ground. The energy ball flew harmlessly skyward. The shadow retreated from Carapace's eyes even as he realized that, from his back, he could not get up. The shape of his armor left him with no leverage whatsoever. Bryon put his foot on Carapace's chest as Kate and Eli moved to secure each of his energy-spewing palms to the ground.

"You looked like you guys needed a hand," Bryon said, hopping off Carapace's chest. "Good thing we were around."

Kate scowled. "We could've handled it."

"Yes, you were handling the energy blast that was about to scorch your face off," Bryon said, smirking.

Eli's shoulder connected with Bryon's roughly as he walked past. "Dude, cut us some slack. Some of us haven't been doing this for awhile like you have."

"Sorry. Maybe Ant-Man was wrong and we just aren't ready," Bryon replied.

Eli's ears flared with blood. "How else are we supposed to learn if Ant-Man decides we're not good enough to go out on our own?"

"_Idle threats,_" said the shadow. "_Ant-Man makes the decisions, not Bryon—something he would take care to remember._"

Bryon glared at the shadow. "I know that. I also know that this was the work of new heroes. So does every villain who sees this on television. If you come across one of _those_ bad guys, good luck. You'll need it."

Then he stalked off into the alleyway. When Kate and Eli reached the mouth of the alley, Bryon was already gone.

*

High above the city sat a lone figure, clad in a red and blue bodysuit accentuated with a large, yellow star on the chest. Blond hair spiked out of the top of his head. The man did not move. He simply hovered, using the senses bestowed upon him to survey the city below.

_Humans_, he thought. _Humans disgust me. _

As he floated, his skin slowly transformed from Caucasian to a sickly green. Notches dug themselves out against his chin as it jutted out. His ears grew to a sharp point even as they changed color with the rest of his body.

_They hate us because they fear us. They believe that we are disgusting because of the way we are able to hide ourselves among them. They fear us because we change shape, because we hide behind facades. They make me laugh. _

_Do they truly believe that Skrulls are the only creatures who wear masks? My time among them, hiding, staking them out and learning their beliefs…it has all been for nothing. All that it has done is prove to me exactly what I told the high council: They are exactly like us. Humans, hiding behind their masks without changing shape. They think that it makes them better, that they can get away with doing the harmful things they do against others, just because they lie. _

_They don't understand what it means to be a true liar, changing in shape as well as face. _

_And they do not understand that the ones they see as fearsome creatures from the stars have been living among them for years, even if they do not know it. _

_Tonight, that changes. Tonight, my sleepers will awaken…_

*

_**The Hideout**_

The wheels of Michael's wheelchair creaked as he rolled from one computer station to the next. The setup that the Avengers had helped finance was nothing like their supercomputer, but it was still an amazing piece of technology. They had linked several separate terminals, which wasn't necessarily high-tech, but it was something that Michael had only seen done and never something he had dealt with.

From the computer, he could tap into the city's traffic cameras (although he certainly hadn't had any Avenger help in hitting that little legal snag). This was his primary use now that he'd lost the use of his legs. He could find out where trouble was and send his friends to it, and everything would be hunky-dory, right?

He'd caught the painful fight between Eli, Kate, and the man who called himself Carapace. That wasn't what had his attention now. He pulled out a cell phone and dialed up Cassie. "Hey, it's Michael."

"What's going on?" Cassie asked.

"About two, three blocks from where you and Billy are, some nut job calling himself the Squid is robbing a liquor store or something. He's claiming to be 'totally evil,' and there aren't any other heroes on the scene. What do you think?" Michael said, poring over the data coming in on three separate screens.

"We're on it," Cassie said, "as soon as I can get Billy to stop complaining, I mean."

Michael shook his head. "Go for it."

He put his hands on the wheels of his chair and forced it to swivel to the next screen, where police reports were buzzing in and out, transcribed by the programs the Avengers had installed. It made it easier than struggling to listen to the static reports.

A flashing orange box lit up at the far-right edge of his task bar. Michael's eyebrows narrowed as he clicked on it. A messenger window popped up.

Unknown User: MICHAEL?

Michael was curious now. This was the first day that the system had been live and already someone out there was trying to contact him. Their intentions were, as always, dubious, but he'd had enough internet contact in his life to play it safe.

ChibiSwordsman: Yes?

Unknown User: I'LL MAKE THIS SIMPLE. I CAN HELP YOU.

ChibiSwordsman: I'm not sure I need any help, thank you.

Unknown User: DON'T DECLINE YET. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M OFFERING.

ChibiSwordsman: Then tell me.

Unknown User: I CAN MAKE YOU WALK AGAIN.

At this, Michael froze. For a few minutes, he stared blankly at the screen, not knowing how to respond. Finally, his fingers flew across the keyboard.

ChibiSwordsman: Okay, you have my attention. Talk.

*

Bottles of wine flew everywhere as the Squid's green-tentacled body flung bottle after bottle into the streets. Shattered glass skittered across the pavement and the street began to run red with spilt wine.

"Where's my father? Send me my father!" the Squid growled, a guttural noise made almost unintelligible by the ruckus he was causing.

"So is this the 'I-know-I'm-gonna-get-caught-so-might-as-well-do-something-stupid' reaction?" Billy asked, floating down to street-level. "Because really, I thought the Rhino had the market cornered on that. I'm gonna have to consult my intellectual property lawyer."

The Squid stared up at Billy with hatred in his lime green eyes. "You! You're not my father!"

"Well, duh. Unless I'm a time-traveler," Billy muttered. A bottle of wine shattered against his hip. "Ow! Dude, what the hell?"

"Stop mocking me! Take me to my father!" the Squid shouted.

Billy floated higher in the air. "Somebody has daddy issues," he muttered. "_… …_"

As he spoke, blue lightning struck each wine bottle, turning to the glass to white Styrofoam. That didn't say much for the contents, though. Each Styrofoam bottle exploded with wine on contact with Billy. Red liquid splashed into his eyes, momentarily blinding him.

The Squid lifted its tentacles, wrapping them around Billy's struggling body. "Now you'll pay for making fun of me!" he shouted.

Billy crashed to the pavement as the Squid passed out on the street. Cassie stood behind him, almost ten feet tall. "Sorry it took me so long. You can't imagine how far it is to run around behind the bad guy when you're only six inches tall," she muttered, shrinking down to her normal height. "You okay?

"Yeah, yeah," Billy said, picking himself up off the ground. He winced as he touched the scrapes on his left arm. "Gonna be fun explaining this one at school tomorrow."

"I don't know how Spider-Man does it," Cassie said, rolling her eyes. "Are you sure you're okay? You've been kinda…dramatic today."

"I'm fine," Billy said. "Can we get out of here before the cops show up?"

"Mind giving me a lift?" Cassie asked. She shrank down again and Billy lifted her up to his shoulder. Then he used his powers and began to fly once more.

Floors passed by rapidly as they ascended. "So, does that mean we're calling it a day?" Billy asked as the rooftop came into view. He touched down on it lightly and helped Cassie to the ground, where she promptly grew to full-size once more.

"Yeah, I guess," Cassie said. She pursed her lips. "Are you sure nothing's wrong?"

Billy's eyebrows narrowed. "I'm sure, okay?"

"Look, if it's about how the patrol went, then I'm sorry," Cassie said. "I know it's not what any of us expected, but I think Dad's just trying to ease us in. He doesn't want to overwhelm us and then have to scrape our bodies up after a fight with the Rhino or something."

Billy laughed. "It's not that, Cassie. Sorry I've been snappy. It's just something personal."

"Fine, don't worry about it," Cassie said. "Wanna head back to the Hideout?"

Billy shrugged. "Sure. I'm ready for a tongue-lashing from your dad."

Cassie rolled her eyes. "Surely the others didn't do _that _badly."

*

"That was pretty bad," Ant-Man said. "I was above the scene the entire time and ready to intervene when Bryon did instead. The thing is, Carapace was ready to fry you guys. I'm not so sure you're ready to be in the field—at least not alone together."

Kate crossed her arms and glared at Eli, who responded with a whispered, "Just as much your fault as mine."

Billy put on a mock documentary narration voice. "You can almost feel the sexual tension as the leader of the pride is put off by the lioness…" He was cut off as he was forced to put up a magical shield when an arrow and throwing star came his way. "Joking! Jeez!"

Ant-Man glared in Eli and Kate's direction before continuing. "That said, Bryon and our mysterious acquaintance performed brilliantly. You two bring a level of experience to this team that it really needs."

Bryon nodded. "Thank you, sir."

He turned to Billy and Cassie next. "You two handled the fight that you came across well, but not to the best of your capabilities. Billy, you're so unbelievably powerful, yet you chose to use it as a distraction. Why didn't you cause the Squid to fall asleep instead? It would've left less property damage, and it would have saved you in dry cleaning bills." He gestured to Billy's wine-drenched costume that was slung over a chair.

"And Cassie, while the element of surprise is something that you can use to your advantage as a size-changer, it's not something that you need to use every single time. A full frontal assault from someone four or five times his size would have caused. Judgment in situations like this isn't always natural. It's learned. We'll…we'll work on that," Ant-Man said. Cassie's face paled at the public criticism from her father.

"_No team comes together on its first time out, not cohesively_," said the shadow.

"Yeah, unless you're the Avengers," Eli muttered.

"_I live in the shadows because I have to,_" the shadow replied. "_Why do you force yourself into the shadow of the Avengers?_"

Eli stood up and slammed his card chair back. The metal folded up and crashed to the ground with a clang. "I don't have to take this crap. See you guys later."

Kate was next. "I hate to say it, but I agree with Eli. This was enough for me for one day."

"I'm staying at Mom's tonight," Cassie said. The trace of a tear on her cheek.

"I'm not done for the night," Bryon said. "You guys can stop if you want, but there's too much going on in the city for me to bother just giving up and going home after some deserved criticism. You with me, shadow?"

"_Someone has to watch your back_," the shadow replied. They, too, left the Hideout.

Ant-Man sighed. "We'll work on this next week," he said, shrinking down. Soon, Billy heard the buzz of a winged ant as it carried Mr. Lang out of the headquarters.

That left Billy and Michael in the Hideout. Michael had been surprisingly silent since their return from the patrol. "You okay, man?" Billy asked, despite his own set of churning emotions.

"Sure," Michael muttered. His fingers skittered across the keyboard as he filed through separate search engines and databases. "I'm going to be here for awhile. I'm working on something."

"Oh, okay," Billy said. "Do you know if we have any plastic bags? I, uh, I can't carry a sopping super-outfit home like this, you know?"

"Should be in the cabinet," Michael said, pointing in the cabinet's direction without looking away from the computer.

"Uh, thanks," Billy said. Then he packed up his costume in one of the plastic bags and made his way into the busy city evening.

*

Khn'nr maintained his position in the sky high above the city. Then, he began to emit the message to his brethren.

_The time that you have been waiting nearly twenty years for is now. We will take over this planet beginning with their most celebrated city. We will defeat their heroes and topple their towers. We must prepare this planet for our colonists. You, my warriors, will be the first. You will be the ones to whom they build monuments in the years to come. _

_Rise with me and claim the planet Earth for the Skrull race! Rise and show the humans that they cannot continue to oppress the rightful owners of this planet! And forever, brothers, unto death, remembers this:_

_He loves you._

*

Billy missed his bike. He'd left it at the bike rack at Teddy's building and was tempted to go back and get it. Still, that would mean being around Teddy, and that wasn't something that Billy was sure he wanted to do right now. Something about Teddy scared him, but he wasn't sure whether that fear came from something about Teddy himself or from something within Billy instead.

Wine dripped from the plastic bag, and Billy wondered how he was going to explain this one to his parents. They'd think he had become an overnight wino. His mom would want him in a twelve-step program by the weekend. He groaned. Wasn't there some kind of dry cleaner who did stuff for heroes without asking any questions? At least that way he wouldn't have to take the costume into his own house. Plus, if they ever fought someone that caused his costume to get ripped or whatever, his mom wouldn't want to see the cuts.

Billy groaned. That reminded him that he hadn't done anything to hide the scrape. Great, just great, he thought.

The musical score from _Wicked_ echoed down the sidewalk. Billy scrambled for his cell phone. Butterflies scattered throughout his stomach as he saw Teddy's name show up on the caller i.d. "Hello?"

"Billy? I need help," Teddy said. His voice was strangled with fear.

The bottom dropped out of Billy's stomach. "What's wrong?"

"How fast can you get here?" Teddy asked.

"I can be there in a few minutes. I was just on the way home."

"Good good good. I'm freaking out right now. I was eating dinner with my mom and, oh god, please just get here…" Teddy begged.

"See you in a minute," Billy said, hanging up so that he could run. Even as his pace quickened, he began to chant, "_IwanttobeatTeddy'shouse…_"

The world shifted and he found himself in front of Teddy's apartment. He dumped the plastic bag with his costume in the dumpster and then sprinted back to the front of the building and up the stairs, banging on the door. He heard a muffled "Come in!" and stepped inside.

"Where are you?" Billy asked, walking into the kitchen.

"My room," Teddy said. Billy stopped in Teddy's doorway. His friend stood in the darkness against a mirror, but it was too dark for Billy to see anything. "My mom, at dinner…she turned green, Billy. I didn't know who else to call. I…I don't know anything anymore."

"What do you mean, she turned green?" Billy asked.

"I-I think she might be a Skrull," Teddy said. He turned around and Billy gasped. Teddy's skin was now a dark shade of green. He held his arms out, shaking, as if he couldn't stand to look at his own skin.

"And I think I might be, too…"

_**To be continued!**_


End file.
